


O Voyagers

by rosa_acicularis



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Queen in the North
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2020-05-16 19:41:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19324789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_acicularis/pseuds/rosa_acicularis
Summary: Jon’s eyes are fixed on the floor at her feet. To a stranger it might look like respect, the proper deference shown to a queen, but Sansa knows better. If he wished to look at her, he would.He has not forgiven me, she thinks, her heart a stone in her chest.He likely never will.





	1. Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for non-graphic discussion of sexual assault and other violence depicted in canon.

 

_Not fare well,_

_But fare forward, voyagers._

        T.S. Eliot

 

 

She’s alone in her solar when the raven from Arya arrives.

 _The Dragon Queen burned the city. Jon has killed her. Come now._  

The words hit her like a fist and she stumbles, colliding with the edge of her desk. A sheaf of parchment slides to the floor.

Daenerys dead, and Jon has killed her. The woman he loves. _I’ve played the game too well_ , she thinks, and feels bile rise in her throat.

“My lady?” Brienne’s voice – she is standing in the open door, watching Sansa with wide, concerned eyes. “Is everything all right?”

The Red Keep in flames, the city around it burning. The thought may have given her some cold satisfaction once, in her darkest moments; now she can only think of the thousands upon thousands of dead. The smell of charred flesh as the smoke begins to rise.

Brienne steps fully into the room. “Is there news of the war, my lady?”

“The war is over,” Sansa says, her voice thin in her own ears. Almost childlike. She hands Brienne the narrow strip of parchment. “We leave for King’s Landing at once.”

 

++  

 

A year after her coronation, Jon comes to Winterfell.

He brings with him three men of the Night’s Watch and three wildlings. Jon and the men of the Watch kneel before her in the Great Hall; the free folk simply stare at her, curiosity and defiance plain in their pale eyes.

Jon’s eyes are fixed on the floor at her feet. To a stranger it might look like respect, the proper deference shown to a queen, but Sansa knows better. If he wished to look at her, he would.

 _He has not forgiven me_ , she thinks, her heart a stone in her chest. _He likely never will_.

Her court is watching, the lords and ladies of the North waiting for her to speak. She sits tall on the throne, her hands folded in her lap. “We had no word of your coming, Lord Commander. Does Castle Black no longer keep ravens, or did you wish for your arrival to be a surprise?”

His jaw clenches, his gaze still on the stones at her feet. “My raven must have gone astray, Your Grace.”

“Lost in a winter storm, perhaps.” She gives him a chilly smile he does not see. “You must be tired from your journey. Rest, and we will meet again in the evening. I’m sure we have much to discuss.”

Jon bows his head. “Your Grace,” he says, and turns to leave. His men follow him out.

For a wild moment, she thinks of calling him back. Of throwing her arms around him like a girl, throne and crown forgotten, and holding him there until he will look her in the eye.

Instead she calls for the next supplicant, and the queen’s audience continues.      

 

++

 

That evening she has him brought alone to her solar. Her servants have set the table for dinner, and when he sees the rich meal laid out for them his eyes go wide.

“I’ve sent the same to your men,” she says before he can speak. “They look nearly as starved as you.”

He joins her, sitting stiffly across the table. “We were beyond the Wall for a long time. Provisions were low.” He looks at a loaf of fresh-baked bread like a man in love, but doesn’t move to take any. “I thought you were still rationing.”

“The Citadel says we have less than a year left of winter. Bran agrees.” She cuts a thick slice of bread and lays it on his plate. “We can afford a little indulgence, Jon.”

They eat in silence but for the howl and hiss of the wind outside. He eats at his usual methodical pace, chewing each bite thoroughly before taking another. He rarely takes his eyes off his plate.

They often ate together in this room before he went south to Dragonstone. When he was the King in the North, and she was his sister. It had been so easy to talk to him then, even when they argued; she wonders why he came all this way, if he can neither speak nor look at her.

“What were you doing beyond the Wall?”

He lowers his cup of ale. “Some of the free folk wanted to return to their villages. Tormund and I went with them.”

She pours herself more wine. “Were they happy to be home again?”

He glances at her, just for a moment. His expression unreadable. “Aye,” he says. “Very happy.”

She sits back in her chair, goblet in hand. “I thought you might stay with them. Live with the wildlings, instead of the Watch.”

He glowers at his dinner. “I swore a vow.”

“Oh, _horseshit_ ,” she says, and his head jerks up like a puppet’s on a string. For the first time since he arrived that morning he looks her full in the face, shocked.

“Sansa—”

“You were a boy when you joined the Night’s Watch, and barely any older than that when they murdered you. You stopped being their brother the day you died, and you owe them nothing you don’t wish to give.” She pauses, eyes narrowed at him. “Unless you’ve taken the black _again_?”

He stares at her, his face haggard and pale. “No. No, I didn’t even think of it. The treaty with the Unsullied—”

“Bran and I promised Grey Worm that we would send you to the Night’s Watch. We said absolutely nothing about keeping you there.” She returns her goblet to the table with a heavy clink. “Anyway, he and the rest of the Unsullied are on the isle of Naath. I doubt he would abandon the people there just to hunt you down beyond the Wall.”

“I think you underestimate how much he hates me,” Jon says, his voice hoarse. There are shadows under his eyes, dark as bruises. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

“You’ve never particularly liked taking my advice,” she says wryly. “I suppose I hoped you’d come to a similar conclusion on your own.”

He looks down, his jaw tight. “You think I’d be better off beyond the Wall.”

Sansa hesitates, unsure what answer to give. After a moment she reaches out, folding his cold hand into hers. “I don’t know,” she says. “But you’d be free, and that’s the very least of what you deserve.”  

He stands abruptly, jerking his hand from her grip. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I’m tired.”    

“Of course,” she says. “You must be – I shouldn’t have kept you so late. We can speak again tomorrow.”

He bows. “As you wish, Your Grace,” he says, and leaves her.

 

++

 

She doesn’t sleep much anymore.

Most nights she lies awake, the day’s missteps and indecisions – _did I choose unjustly, did I frown too much, did I speak when I should have stayed silent_ – roiling through her mind in waves of worry and doubt. In the dark, each stone of Winterfell is a weight upon her chest. A thing left undone, or done poorly.

 _I cannot be their queen_ , she thinks. _I am too stupid. I am too weak._

 _We are all weak_ , says the memory of his voice in her ear, smooth as silk or poison. _We are all fools._ _Better to know now, my love, than to learn it on the executioner’s block._

She remembers the look on his face just before Arya slit his throat. The spill of his blood across the floor. _Fair advice_ , she thinks, and counts the hours until dawn.     

 

++

 

The next day Jon brings a wildling woman and a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch to her council room.

The Watchman is Jon’s steward, a gangling, cheerful young man named Tobas Wren. The wildling woman’s name is Noya. Yesterday Sansa had thought her a man in her heavy furs; now she sees a tall, narrow woman with long streaks of grey in her dark hair. Her face is sharp-angled and deeply lined, and she studies Sansa with pale, clever eyes.    

“So you’re the kneeler queen,” she says, taking her seat at the long table while Jon and his steward bow. “I’d heard your hair was silver-white, like a rabbit’s.”

Jon flinches. Sansa feels her face heat, the flush spreading across her cheeks.

“Nah, you’re getting them mixed up again,” Tobas Wren says, his accent pure Flea Bottom. “The silver-haired one was never Queen in the North. They wouldn’t have her.” He gives Sansa another crooked bow and sits beside Jon. “Begging your pardon, Your Grace.”

“My mistake,” the wildling says, grinning at Sansa from across the table. “Southron politics, you know. So confusing.”

“We’re here to discuss the future of the Night’s Watch,” Jon says, his Lord Commander’s voice too loud for the size of the room. “And the future of the free folk in the North.”   

Sansa’s record book is already on the table, open to the correct page. She takes up a quill and dips it into ink. “How many men are there now in the Watch?”

Jon and Tobas exchange a telling look. “Forty-three,” Jon says. “Fifteen new brothers and twenty-eight survivors of the Great War.”

“I’m surprised you got as many as fifteen,” Sansa says, marking the numbers on the page. “Eastwatch-by-the-Sea was destroyed, the Shadow Tower abandoned during the War. What’s the condition of Castle Black?”

“The free folk have helped us make repairs. It’ll get us through the winter.”  

Builders will be needed come spring, if they can be spared. She makes a note. “And Mole’s Town?”

Jon shakes his head. “Empty. Any smallfolk who survived fled south long ago.”

“Without their farms, it’ll be difficult to feed even the few men you have. We’ll need to resettle the Gift as soon as the season turns.” She sets down her quill. “What about the Wall?”

Noya snorts. “It’s in fine condition, but for where the Walkers blasted a great fucking hole in it.”

“So I’ve been told. It will need to be repaired.”

Jon sighs. “The Night King is dead, Sansa. We’re at peace with the free folk. We don’t need the Wall anymore.”

She sits back in her chair. “Bran says we do. I’m inclined to agree with him.”

He frowns. “It’ll take years, and hundreds of men. And even then, we’ve no idea how to repair a hole that size. That knowledge was lost thousands of years ago.”

She rolls her eyes. “If only we had a little brother who could observe any moment in history. Surely _that_ would help.”

“There’s no point,” Jon says, his temper rising. “We’re done with all that now. The North is safe. It’s _over_.”

She lifts her chin. “You can’t know that.”

“And neither can you," he says hotly. "You act like you know everything, like you can always see what’s best, but you make mistakes like anyone else. You think you’re being clever, but really—” He stops, biting down on the words before he can say them.

“But what?” she says, her voice like ice. “But really I’m _what_?”

He pushes himself to his feet, his chair scraping against the stone floor. “But really,” he says, “you’re just playing the game they taught you, moving the rest of us like pieces on a board. You say the right thing at the right time and we do whatever you want. Say whatever you want. Kill whomever you want.”

Sansa stands. “I am the Queen in the North, Jon. When I pass the sentence, I swing the sword.”

“Like you did with Littlefinger?”

She almost laughs. “You think I tricked Arya into cutting his throat for me? It was her revenge as much as mine.” She circles the table, moving towards him. “Stop pretending. Say what you want to say.”

He stares past her, at the door. “Your Grace—”

She seizes his chin and forces him to meet her eyes. “ _Say it_.”

For a long moment, Jon simply looks at her. Then he says, “You’re my family, Sansa. I love you. But I don’t think I’ll ever trust you again.”

He leaves the room. His steward follows, giving Sansa a hurried bow on his way out the door.

Noya still lounges at the table, cleaning her fingernails with a small knife. “He blames you for the death of his rabbit-haired queen.”

Sansa sits in the nearest chair. “Yes.”

“Though he murdered her himself.”

“Yes.” Her hands are shaking. She can’t remember the last time that happened.

“I once killed a man my sister loved,” the wildling says. “It was a very long time ago, and he deserved it. But she’s never really forgiven me.” She fixes Sansa with a sudden, hard look. “Is Lord Snow right? Did you kill his lover?”

Sansa clasps her hands tightly, trying to steady them. “He told me a secret, and I used it to hurt her. To drive them apart. I threatened her claim to the throne, and she—”

“Slaughtered thousands of people. Innocents, in a city that had surrendered.” Noya taps the blade of her little knife against the table’s edge. “Would she have done that, if you hadn’t spread his secret?”

Sansa shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“If he hadn’t feared for your life, would he still have stabbed her through the heart?”

The fires had died by the time she’d arrived in King’s Landing, but the smell of burning flesh never faded. A year has passed, and Bran says they are still burying the dead. They will likely never find them all.

“I hope so,” Sansa says. “I know he loved her, but – _gods_ , I hope so.”  

Noya stands, slipping the knife into her sleeve. “Don’t lose heart, kneeler queen. Your brother-cousin will forgive you in time. He has a much sweeter temperament than my poor sister.” She reaches out and takes hold of Sansa’s shoulder, her firm grip strangely reassuring. “You were right about the Wall. We’ll need it again soon enough.”

Sansa looks up at her. “Tell Jon.”

“Oh, I’ll be telling him several things,” she says, and leaves Sansa alone.  

 

++

 

That night, the snow falls high as the walls of Winterfell.

The castle is buried, but it was built for storms like these; the smallfolk shelter in the Great Hall, drinking and singing and telling tales, and together, highborn and low, they wait for the snows to end.

Sansa can hear the singing even in the queen’s chambers. The world outside the castle walls is swallowed in silence, but merry voices fill the halls and corridors and corners, echoing over stone until they reach her quiet bed. They sing _Milady’s Supper_ , and _Wolves in the Hills,_ and _The Maids That Bloom in Spring_. One of Jon’s wildlings sings a song of the free folk, something sad and lovely and dark; she wishes she could sneak down to the Hall and hear it properly.

But if their queen were there, they would not laugh so loud, nor speak so freely. They wouldn’t sing their bawdy songs or tell their ribald tales. And after the wars, after the griefs of winter, her people need nights like these. They deserve any little taste of happiness she can give them.    

 _And Jon will be there_ , she thinks. _Maybe he will laugh, if I am not there to hear._

A scratch at her door. Her hand wraps around the hilt of the dagger she keeps hidden by her bed, though she hardly knows how to use it; her heart is beating like a war drum in her chest when the door creaks open and a long, white muzzle appears, followed by two red eyes and a ragged excuse for an ear.

“Ghost,” she hisses, tucking the dagger back into its hiding place. “What are you doing here?”

The direwolf lopes over to the bed and shoves his nose into her bare armpit.

It is the coldest fucking thing she has ever felt. She shrieks a little before she can stop herself, squirming away as the wolf snuffles delightedly against her neck.

“You _monster_ ,” she whispers, trying to muffle her laughter. “You absolute, you _terrible beast_ —”  

Ghost leaps up beside her, and the bed frame creaks ominously under his weight. She forgets his size sometimes, so used to seeing him in the wild, out-of-doors; looking up at him now is a sharp reminder. He looms over her in the dark, filling her vision. Immense and impossibly close. He turns in a circle three times, delicately avoiding her legs, and then curls into a ball at the end of her bed.

“Lady used to do that,” Sansa says, her voice thick. “Exactly that, every night.”

Ghost rests his massive head on her shin. His ear twitches.   

Laughter echoes from the Hall below. Sansa lies back, closes her eyes, and lets herself dream of sleep.

 

++

 

She wakes to the sound of her chamber door slamming shut.

Ghost has moved in the night. Now his head rests beside hers on the pillows, her arm slung loosely around his broad neck. Her face is pressed to the thick ruff of fur there, where he smells of soil and wolf and her own sleep. She pushes herself up on one elbow, peering over him at the closed door.

She yawns. “Ghost, did someone—”

Outside in the corridor, a woman starts screaming.

“ _Shit_ ,” she says, and she’s fumbling under her mattress for her dagger when the door slams open and Jon rushes in, sword drawn.

He stops abruptly, looking baffled. “Ghost?” He lowers his sword. “How in seven hells did you—”

She sits up in the bed, hair wild and her dagger finally in hand. “Jon! What’s happened?”

Jon takes one look at her and bursts out laughing. “Oh fuck,” he wheezes, his hand pressed against his chest. He slumps back against the door. “Oh, thank the gods.”

She’s tempted to throw the dagger at him. “Jon!”

He wipes tears from his eyes. “Sorry, sorry. You – your maid came in and saw Ghost in your bed. She must’ve thought—” He starts to laugh again, barely taking in enough breath to say, “She must’ve thought he _ate_ _you_.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she says, struggling out of her heavy blankets and furs. “It’ll be all over the castle in minutes.” She stumbles out of bed and grabs for her morning robe, shrugging it on over her sleeveless silk shift. On her way out the door she slaps the hilt of her dagger into Jon’s palm. “I need a better bloody place to hide this,” she says, and hurries to find her terrified maid.

“I’m so sorry, Your Grace,” the girl sobs. “You never oversleep, not ever, and when I saw that beast—”

Sansa pats her shoulder, gesturing over the girl’s head for a steward to fetch some soothing tea. “Hush now, it’s perfectly all right. A perfectly natural misunderstanding.”

She wails. “But I thought you were _dead_ —”

Sansa makes wordless calming noises and tries not to think about the expression on Jon’s face, just before she covered herself with her robe. The stunned look of horror in his eyes when he finally saw the scars.

Strange to think he’d never seen them before. She has so many.

“It’s all right,” Sansa tells the weeping girl, her mind years and rooms away. “Don’t worry. We’re all safe here.”

 

++

 

“They say you had a visitor in the night,” Noya says later, when they meet again in the council room. She gives Sansa a lascivious grin. “A real _wild thing,_ I hear.”

Jon steps up beside Sansa, bristling. “It was my wolf. He’s known Sansa since he was a pup.”

Noya winks at him. “Not much more than a pup yourself, Snow.”

“Shall we sit?” Sansa says, gesturing to the empty chairs at the long table. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

Noya has brought the other wildlings with her, two hulking men with tangled beards and deep-set eyes. Noya nods, and the men sit silently at the table, one on either side of her. Jon sits close on Sansa’s right; his steward takes the place to her left.

Poor Tobas looks much the worse for last night’s snowbound revelry, his face pale and sweating. Sansa discreetly passes him a handkerchief.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” he whispers, sounding miserable. “The embroidery is very pretty.”

Sansa is unsurprised to find Noya a skilled negotiator. They begin with an agreement that all land north of the Wall is beyond the rule of any king, and that free folk travelling south of the Gift could not be compelled to swear fealty to any monarch or lord.

“Unless they should choose to kneel,” Sansa says, and the wildling on Noya’s left grunts his displeasure. Sansa acknowledges him with a nod. “An oath of fealty does not only benefit the powerful, ser. Those sworn to a lord will have his protection and shelter from the winter storms. An oath to a just lord could save a man’s life.”

Noya grins. “If the lord were just, he wouldn’t ask a man to kneel before giving him aid.”

“That is mercy, not justice,” Sansa says, matching the wildling woman’s grin with a cool smile of her own. “Justice would create a debt between them -- one the saved man could repay by kneeling.”

The other woman laughs. “Fair enough, wolf queen. Let’s talk about the Wall.”

The wildlings want free passage through the gate at Castle Black, which Jon agrees to with some stipulations; the tentative peace between the free folk and the Watch is too precious for either side to risk endangering it. The trouble begins when it comes time to discuss the Gift.  

“The Queen in the North has no claim to those lands,” Noya says sharply. “Your ancestor gifted them to the Night’s Watch thousands of years ago.”

“But if they are to be settled, if they are to be _farmed_ , it will be by my people. I cannot send them north to build homes and villages and families only to see them raided and _raped_ —”

Noya sneers. “Because your just Northern lords have never raped, robbed, or killed. Roose Bolton was your father’s bannerman. A _Greyjoy_ lived among you like a brother.”

“Careful,” Jon says, a blade’s edge in his voice. Sansa touches his arm and feels the coiled tension in it.

“You’re right,” Sansa tells her. “Not about Theon, but about Roose and the others. And I swear to you, as long as I sit on the Northern throne there will be no quarter for rapers or murderers, highborn or low. Can you promise the same?”

Noya sits back in her chair, her expression carefully neutral. “You send rapers to the Wall.”

“Not anymore,” she says, holding Noya’s steady gaze. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jon slowly nod his agreement. “Can you promise there will be no raiding? No women stolen from their homes in the night?”

“The Walrus Men of the Frozen Shore will promise,” says the wildling on Noya’s right, his voice sudden and as deep as grinding stone.  

Noya almost smiles. “The clans of the Frostfang Valleys will promise.”  

There’s an expectant silence, and Noya turns to the man on her left with a pointed look. He scowls and says, “The Nightrunners will promise.”

“And Tormund Giantsbane of Ruddy Hall will convince the rest,” Noya says. She gives Jon a coy look. “They say he’s grown very fond of kneelers of late.”

They spend another grueling hour on the trade of steel and furs, and when they are done Noya stands and says, “The wolf queen and I will share a drink. The rest of you can leave.”

Jon hesitates, but Sansa waves him off. He leaves the council room with the wildlings and his ale-sick steward, giving her one last unreadable glance over his shoulder before he goes.  

“Poor man,” Noya says, pouring them each generous a cup of wine. “He doesn’t know _what_ he wants.”

Sansa accepts the cup. “I can call for mead or ale, if you like. Tormund told me once that the free folk hate wine.”

“Tormund is an ass.” She takes a long draft of Arbor gold and sits again at the table, her arm hooked over the back of her chair. “You know that it won’t be as simple as saying the words. ‘No more rape, no more murder. No more innocents stolen from their beds.’ We can’t change the nature of men in a day.”    

“If at all.” Sansa shakes her head, a bitter taste in her mouth. “What point is there in lords or kings or clan leaders if we can’t keep the most vulnerable amongst us safe? If we don’t even _try_?”

Noya watches her for a long, quiet moment. In the hearth, the flames crackle. “I don’t know if there is a point. I don’t know if we do more harm than good. But we’re here, so we’ll try for something like justice. And do the best we can, until something better comes along.”

Sansa thinks suddenly of the last time she saw her father in this room. The steady grip of his hand on her shoulder. She feels a faint smile on her lips. “Thank you, Noya. You’ve been very kind to me.”

The other woman shrugs. “I’ve been honest.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” She sinks back in her chair and sips her wine. Outside, the snow falls.

After a time Noya reaches for the jug and refills both their cups. “Where are all your people, Stark?”

“Indoors, hopefully.” She swirls the wine in her cup. It looks as lovely as it tastes. “Those here in Winterfell are probably down in the Great Hall, singing and laughing and staying warm. You may not have noticed, but it’s rather cold outside – for us southron folk, anyway.”

Noya sighs. “I mean your advisors, little queen. Your small council, your maester, your Hand – where are they?”

Sansa pauses, surprised and a little confused by the question. “Well, I have a master of coin and a master of laws, of course. I meet with them often enough. And Maester Wolkan is a competent man.”

“You didn’t invite any of them to meet with us today.” Noya’s eyes narrow. “Do they not like the free folk?”    

“No, it’s just – I didn’t think they’d be needed. I’ll meet with them later and share what we discussed. That’s what I usually do.”

Noya points a finger at her, rather rudely. “You don’t trust them.”

“I don’t _distrust_ them. But they’re men. If I let them get too close, they won’t see me as their queen anymore. I’ll just be a girl in their eyes, and once that happens they’re useless to me. It’s better if they stay strangers.”

“That sounds very lonely.”      

Sansa looks away. “My only living brother is King in the South. My sister sailed west. My sworn sword protects her king, and my former husband is his Hand. Everyone else I’ve ever cared for is dead.”

“Except for Jon Snow.”

“Except for Jon Snow, who hates the sight of me.” She takes a large, unladylike swallow of wine. Her cup is almost empty. “You know, for someone who claims to be confused by southron politics, you certainly know our customs well.”  

Noya laughs. “And you, wolf queen, could know ours better.”

Sansa pours them each another cup. “Very well then, Noya of the Frostfang Valleys – teach me.”

 

++

 

Jon is already waiting in her solar when she and Noya arrive.

“Oh no,” Sansa groans, swinging into the room with the open door. “Noya, look. Jon is here.”

Jon gapes at her. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Certainly not,” Sansa says, nose in the air. “We were engaging in a cultural exchange.” She trips over her own shoe, and Jon catches her arm. The traitor shoe falls from her foot like the craven it is. Sansa glares at it.

“I may have taught her a few drinking songs,” Noya says. Sansa burps delicately in Jon’s face. “All right, several. I taught her several drinking songs.”

“One was in the Old Tongue,” Sansa says. “It was about giants fucking!”

Jon glares. “Noya—”  

Noya shrugs. “What? She said she wanted to learn.” She peels Sansa off Jon’s arm and sets her down gently in the nearest soft chair. “Listen here, Stark. Eat a biscuit, drink lots of water, and get some sleep. Here’s your shoe.”

Sansa takes the craven shoe. “Someone should write a song about you, Noya. A good song, with lots of clapping.”

Noya smiles. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Your Grace.” She turns to Jon and fixes him with a hard look. “She had a good day today. Don’t be an ass.”

She goes, leaving them alone.

Sansa slumps in her chair. Jon is turned away from her, his shoulders a rigid line. So much, she thinks, for the happy haze of drink. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know you’d be waiting. What do you need?”

“I don’t—” He stops. Turns and gives her a false, thin-lipped smile. “Nothing, Your Grace. It can wait.”

Irritation swells. “Honestly, Jon, I’m not so drunk that I can’t have a _conversation_. Just say what you came here to say.”

He pulls something from his belt – a small dagger in a leather sheath. He offers it to her hilt-first. “I found this in the armory. The hilt’s a better size for your hand, and if you sew a pocket to the mattress you should be able to draw it quickly enough.”

She takes the dagger, feeling its compact weight. It’s perfect. “The pocket’s a good idea. I should’ve thought of that.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “You were thinking of other things.”

His stupid face looks wonderful in the candlelight. “Thank you,” she says, letting the warmth she feels seep into her voice. “I’ll think of you every time I stab someone with it.”

She’d hoped to surprise him into a laugh again, the way she had that morning, but instead his expression turns solemn and strained. He sits in the nearest chair and leans close, his eyes intent on hers. “Sansa, you need a Queensguard.”  

She sinks back into her chair. “Oh no. I have guards already. More than enough.”

“And where were they this morning, when your maid was screaming for help? Or last night, when a direwolf snuck into your bed?”

“I sent them away.” As she does almost every night. She hates the thought of them standing there, waiting on the other side of her door; it makes the queen’s chambers feel like a prison cell. She reaches out and grasps his hand. “This our home, Jon. I’m safe here.”

He looks down at their joined hands. He breathes deep, like a man in pain. “Sansa. We both know that’s not true.”

Ice fills her veins. She removes her hand. “I see. This is about the scars.”

He shakes his head. “No.”

She stands, looming over him. Her back as straight as steel. “You pity me.”

“ _Never_ ,” he says, voice raw. He looks up at her, his eyes shining and dark. “You’ve seen my scars. Did you feel pity?”

“No,” she says through her teeth. “I felt like hunting down the people who hurt you and ripping them to pieces.”

He stands, his face so close that she can feel the tremble of his breath on her cheek. “Ramsey is dead. Joffrey is dead. Littlefinger is dead. I would kill them all again for you if I could.” He steps back. “Let me do this. Let me choose the men for your Queensguard.”

She closes her eyes and feels the room spin. The wine pulls at her, drawing her back down into the chair. She sags against the cushions, her head in her hands. “I’m so tired. Aren’t you tired, Jon?”

His face shutters. “You’ve had too much wine. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

“I’ll feel sick in the morning, but that’s not what I mean.” The snow is still falling outside. The fire in the hearth burns low, casting long shadows across the floor. She stares into the flames. “Littlefinger taught me many things, but the most useful lesson I learned from him was how to truly know a person. Not just their desires and their weaknesses, but their _impulses_ – how they react when threatened, or praised, or tempted. How they respond to betrayal, or to love.”

Sansa looks away from the fire. Looks up, and sees the flames reflected in his eyes.

“When I told Tyrion you were the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms, I knew what he would do. I knew Varys would act; I knew you would refuse him. And I knew Daenerys loved you, and wanted your love in return.” She smiles, heartbroken. “I thought I understood her, but I didn’t. And so many people died because of it.”  

“They died because of her,” he says, and she can see how much the words cost him. “It was her choice, and she made it.”

“She would have burned me alive, if you hadn’t killed her. She would have made you watch.”

“No,” Jon says softly. “I would have burned with you.”

The room is quiet but for the sound of her own breath, loud in her ears. “I’m not your sister, Jon. I’m not your queen. I swore to keep your secret, and I betrayed you.” She swallows. “I’d do it again.”

“I know.” He holds her gaze for a long moment, his scarred face tender and grave. “Will you let me choose the men?”

She nods. He lowers his head in a brief bow.

“Sleep well, Your Grace,” he says, and leaves.  

 

++

 

Jon and his men ride out the day the snow stops.

Sansa stands on the battlements, watching them go. When they are little more than specks of grey in the distance, Ghost circles back towards the castle. Towards her. The wolf runs along the wall beneath where she stands, a silent goodbye before he peels away and rejoins the six riders headed north.   

“You’re going to freeze your teats off out here,” Noya says, stepping up behind her. “We need to get you some proper furs.”

“My furs are fine.” Sansa turns, suppressing a smirk. “And in the interest of cultural exchange, I should probably tell you that one generally doesn’t refer to a queen’s ‘teats’ in casual conversation.”

Noya gives her an earnest, wide-eyed look. “What word should I use instead, Your Grace? _Dugs_?”

Sansa laughs then – a real laugh, loud and undignified. Her ribs squeeze tight against her corset. “Oh, fuck you.”

“Fuck you back,” Noya says cheerfully.

The riders are gone. Sansa leans one gloved hand against the parapet, looking north. “You know it’s not too late to go with them. If you want to go.”

Noya smiles. “That’s the thing about being free, Stark. I’m always exactly where I want to be.” She walks backwards, towards the tower door. “You ready to stop pining like a maiden in a song and do some bloody work?”

“Always,” Sansa says, and follows her friend inside.


	2. Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update from Spring 2020:
> 
> I wrote this chapter in the summer of 2019, not knowing that in less than a year we'd be facing a global pandemic. I was, quite literally, a sweet summer child. Given how stressful the current climate is, I do want to warn readers that this chapter describes in some detail a quarantined Winterfell facing a deadly illness. If that's too much like your actual life right now - me too, dude. Me too.

Spring comes within the year, and with it comes rain, and mud, and fever. 

The sickness starts in the winter town. Sansa sends the children and the elderly away to outlying farms, but when denied the weak the fever takes the strong instead, burning them from the inside until their fever breaks or they die. They lose ten people in the first week. Twenty-one in the second. After the third she stops counting.

Sansa’s world narrows to the Great Hall, to the sick beds lining the walls, the bowls of thin broth and blankets fetid with sweat. After Maester Wolkan dies clutching her hand, begging forgiveness from a woman only he can see, Sansa turns to the midwives and woods witches of the smallfolk. They make root poultices and brew teas of willow bark and yarrow; her Queensguard burns the bodies of the dead.  

 _Thank you, Your Grace_ , the dying say as she cools their brows, as she spoons broth between their cracked lips. _Thank you_ , they say, as if she has not failed them. As if their corpses won’t soon be burning with the rest.    

Noya shoves a bowl of stew into her hands. “Eat. You look about to collapse.”

Just the thought of food makes her stomach roil. “I ate the bread you gave me this morning. I’m not hungry.” 

Noya stares at her, worry written plainly on her sharp face. “That was nearly two days ago. Sansa—”

“I’ll eat it. I’m fine,” she says, and moves on to the next bed. The young woman there has survived the fever. She’s too weak now to stand, but soon she will be up and caring for the sick with the rest of them. Her sister died four days ago; Sansa cannot remember either of their names. 

“I have stew, if you’re hungry,” she tells the woman, and gets a fragile smile in return. Sansa’s helping her sit up to eat when the young woman gasps and says:

“Look, Your Grace. It’s your White Wolf.” 

Sansa turns and sees Jon kneeling by a dying man’s bedside, their hands clasped. Jon speaks, and the man wheezes a laugh.  

“I’ll kill him,” Sansa says. She presses the bowl of stew into the young woman’s hands; her own are shaking with rage. “The _idiot_. I’ll kill him myself.” 

Jon looks up as she stalks towards him. His cloak is soaked through, his tied hair still dripping with rain. His eyes widen when he sees her – sees her stained gown and unwashed hair and pale, pinched face. She experiences a strange moment of wounded vanity just before she seizes his arm and hisses, “Are you mad? _Get out_.” 

He opens his mouth to argue, but she’s already dragging him to the doors. She shoves him out of the Hall and into the rain. 

“Sansa—”

“What are you doing here?” A step outside, and she’s drenched to the skin. “I sent you a raven. I told you we had the fever. _Why_ would you—”

“Because you sent me a raven!” he says, almost shouting. “Because you—” He stops, takes her by the shoulders and pulls her aside to the shelter of the eaves. Rain falls around them in a relentless curtain, obscuring the sky. “How could you think I’d stay away? You tell me you’ve put the castle under quarantine, that people are _dying_ —”  

“And so you thought you’d ride six hundred miles in the rain to join them?” She presses her hands over her eyes, fingernails digging into her scalp in bright soothing flickers of pain. “No, you’re not here. You can’t be here. I’m asleep again, I’m dreaming—”

“Sansa,” he says like she’s injured him, like she’s done something unforgivable, and then his hands are gently drawing hers aside – cradling her cheek, brushing cool against her forehead. “You’re so warm,” he says, like his heart is breaking. “Sansa, you’re burning up.” 

Nothing has ever felt as good as his hands on her face. She turns into the touch, and her lips graze the rain-chilled skin of his palm; they both shudder. 

“ _Gods_ ,” Jon says, choked, his darkglass eyes limned with fear and grief and a helpless _wanting –_ such commonplace emotions, so extraordinary to see in him. She reaches up and holds his wrists, her fingers firebrands on his skin. 

“I don’t have an heir,” she says, panic like a pulse in her throat. “Jon, if I die—”

“You won’t,” he says, and then she is in her bedchamber, Noya peeling her out of a rain-soaked gown. The hearth roaring with fire. “I dreamt Jon was here,” she says, swaying. Her grown falls to the floor with a slap.

“He’s getting more blankets.” Noya pulls her towards the fire. “Take off your shift.” 

All the blankets are in the Great Hall; he will not take them from the sick. Her damp shift slides down her shoulders. The fire is too hot; when she stands close it feels as though it is inside her, burning. 

Noya threads Sansa’s arms through the sleeves of her morning robe. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, her voice thick. Her face turned away. Noya never hides anything; she must be very sad.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Sansa says. _I didn’t want to say it aloud._ She wonders if Noya is a dream too. If in truth she is still sitting by the grieving woman’s bedside, helping her choke down mouthfuls of tepid stew. She wishes she could remember the dead sister’s name. 

Jon comes in with a pile of old, old blankets, still smelling like the cedar chest where they were stored, folded, tucked away and forgotten by her mother’s hands before she went south to die. How did Jon know where to find them? He was not her brother. 

“No, I wasn’t,” Jon says, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, leading her from the fire. Noya helps him, folding Sansa into the beautiful cool bed, laying her beneath the cedar blankets and the heavy sound of rain against the roof. Her eyes close, luxuriously. 

“Just for a moment,” Sansa tells them, her face half-pressed to the pillow. “Just for an hour, then I’ll go back to the Hall.”    

“I’ll wake you,” Jon says, and she sleeps.

 

++

 

She wakes shivering. 

She is sweating, sweltering under heavy blankets, but her teeth chatter with cold. Jon says her name, and she turns towards the sound of his voice. He sits beside her bed, haloed by the hearth fire’s light. His face is in shadow.  

“It’s the chills,” she says. Croaks, in a voice like ice cracking. “It means—”

“I know,” Jon says. She reaches out, wanting to pull him close. To see him better. He catches her hand, and cool fingertips settle against her wrist. “Will you drink some tea?” 

There is nothing she wants less, but she lets him put another pillow beneath her head and place the cup in her trembling hands. The tea is hot and bitter, medicinal, and he smiles a little when she wrinkles her nose at the taste. She drinks it all, and he takes back the empty cup.  

She’s watched dozens of her people die of this fever. If she has the chills, she knows what comes next. 

“Where’s Noya?” she asks. 

“Down in the Hall. She said to tell you she’d be very cross if you tried to join her there.”

Sansa laughs weakly. “That is _not_ what she said.” 

“No, it isn’t. I’m not repeating what she said.” He tugs the blankets higher, tucking them around her shoulders. “You should sleep. Noya will be back soon with some broth.” 

She grits her teeth against a wave of shudders. Sweat trickles down the back of her neck. “I should be down there. They’ll all wonder where I’ve gone.”

“Noya’s told them I’m ill, and you’re here caring for me.” He frowns. “She seemed to think people would like that.” 

Sansa closes her eyes, torn between gratitude and irritation. It’s best that her illness stay secret for as long as possible; if Noya has to resurrect old gossip to keep that secret, then so be it. As long as no one sings the damned song at her again. 

The rain is loud against the roof. Jon’s chair creaks as he moves, and she opens her eyes. He’s so close; she would have him closer. “Will you light a candle?” she says. “I can hardly see your face.”  

He hesitates for a long moment – an unreadable silence. Then he stands and fetches a candle. Lights the wick and places it nearby.  

The candlelight is gentle, flickering. It shows her the stubborn line of his jaw, the lush curve of his mouth. The fear for her hidden in his eyes. Sansa looks at the man and sees the boy he once was – clean-faced, without beard or scars. Sullen and thin-skinned and steadfast, so true and loving to those who loved him. So kind and careful with the cruel girl she’d been. Her brother Jon. Her half-brother, the bastard of Winterfell.  

That boy has been gone a long time. She’ll never see him again. 

“I wish I could go back,” she says, “and love you better.” 

He shakes his head, grief deep in the lines of his face. “You’ve given me more than I deserve.” 

“You’re wrong,” Sansa says, her voice shaking. “You deserve – if I could go back, right now, I would walk up to you in full sight of Mother and Father and everyone else in the courtyard, and I would take your hand—”

She fumbles for his wrist. He inhales sharply when she lifts his hand to her mouth, pressing her lips to the rough skin of his knuckles. 

“And I would kiss it.” She swallows hard. “And I would, I would say—”

His thumb brushes her lip. His eyes are dark, fascinated. Fixed on hers. “What would you say?”

“I would say that, bastard or not, brother or not, you were the best man I’d ever known.” She squeezes his fingers, shivering. “I’ll tell them that, if I see them again.”    

His eyes close. “You’re not going to die,” he says. Trying to reshape the world around his stubbornness, as he always does. He’s a fool, and she loves him.

She releases his hand. “The blankets aren’t enough. Will you lie next to me?” 

She thinks for a moment he’ll refuse. Instead he bends down to remove his boots. Unlaces and shrugs off his jerkin, leaving him in his breeches and shirt. “Budge over,” he says, like they’re children again, brothers and sisters piling together into one bed, and then he lifts the blankets and lies in the empty space beside her, a careful distance between them. 

She curls on her side to better see his face. “If I asked you to ride out tonight, to leave Winterfell and save yourself, would you go?” 

He smiles. “No.”

She lifts her head, looking regally down her nose at him. “What if I ordered you to?”

He reaches over and brushes a damp strand of hair from her eyes. “You’re not queen of the Night’s Watch, Your Grace. I’ve sworn you no oaths.”  

“What if I begged?” 

He pauses. His fingers graze her temple. “Even if I were willing, Sansa, you wouldn’t let me go. Not when I could spread the sickness. You wouldn’t risk it.” He lowers his hand, letting it settle between them on the bed. “Not even for your family.” 

He’s right, and she hates it. If only she were another kind of queen; if only she could protect those she loved and say to hell with everyone else. _Fuck honor_ , she thinks wildly, cold like a fire blazing under her skin; _fuck duty, and mercy, and justice if this is the cost_. _Let them all_ burn _—_  

She is shaking again, racked with chills, her teeth rattling in her skull. Jon hushes her, gentle as he pulls her against the warmth of his chest. He holds her delicately, careful not to enclose or restrain. “It’s all right,” he says over and again. His voice soft, almost pleading: “You’re safe; I have you. It’ll be all right.” 

She listens until the cold swallows her, and all that’s left is the dark. 

 

++

 

She wakes to the sound of rain, and Cersei Lannister standing at her bedside. 

“There you are,” the Queen says, smiling her poison-sweet smile. “I thought we’d lost you, little dove.” 

Sansa’s breath catches in her throat and she stills, frozen like a rabbit in fear. Jon sleeps deeply beside her, one open hand extended in the empty space between them; if he wakes—

“You’ve exhausted him,” the Queen says, amused. She lingers over the sight of his sleeping form, her eyes half-lidded and pleased. “I misjudged you, child. It seems you and I have more in common than I thought.” 

 _I’m dreaming again_ , Sansa tells herself. _She isn’t real. She isn’t here._

“Dreaming is a kind word for it. Your brain might be boiling in your skull, but that’s no reason for a lady to dwell on unpleasantness.” Cersei gracefully gathers her skirts and lowers herself to sit on the edge of the bed. Her gown is Lannister scarlet; her hair spills in smooth golden waves over her shoulders. She’s every bit as beautiful as Sansa remembers. “Why do you think I’m here, sweetling?” 

“I don’t know,” Sansa says, her voice small as a child’s. 

“She doesn’t know.” The Queen shakes her golden head in mock disappointment. “You could have had anyone – your traitor father, your murdered brothers. Your mother, her pretty throat cut to the bone. Or perhaps one of your devoted admirers?” She taps a finger against her chin. “What was the name of Roose Bolton’s bastard, the one who finally won your precious maidenhead?”

Her hands fist in the blankets. “Ramsey.”

“Ah yes. You could’ve been reunited with your beloved Ramsey, or poor betrayed Petyr Baelish. Even my whoremongering little brother might have made an appearance.” 

“Tyrion is still alive,” Sansa says. 

“Is he? Pity.” Cersei swirls the wine in her heavy, ruby-encrusted goblet, her eyes distant. “Do you think I’ve come to haunt you, little dove?”

Jon sighs in his sleep; his fingertips brush her shoulder. Sansa looks to the Queen and says, “I wept when they told me you died.”  

Cersei arches an eyebrow. “How strange.” She raises the goblet to her lips. “I suppose you wanted to be there when it happened. To see it done yourself.” 

“I did. But that isn’t why.” She pushes with trembling arms until she sits upright in the bed, her face at a level with the Queen’s. “I was so afraid of you, for so long. And then it was like all my fear had been used up, and in its place was just—” 

“Forgiveness?” Cersei says, sneering.

“No. Never that.” The cold is gone now, and in its place Sansa feels a glowing, buoyant heat. The fever has left her weightless, hollowed by fire. “I had questions that needed answering. I needed to know – how could someone as clever as you be so stupid?”

Cersei flinches. “You _insolent_ —”

“Do you know how little kindness it would have taken to earn my loyalty? I was a child, terrified and desperate for the smallest scraps of affection or care – if you had been gentle to me, had made even a show of trying to protect me from Joffrey’s cruelty, you could’ve owned me completely. I was the key to the North; you could have made me yours, and instead you tormented and despised me. Why?”

The Queen speaks through clenched teeth, as if compelled to answer. “I was afraid.”

“Obviously,” Sansa says, her tone scathing. “Nothing made you more monstrous than fear. But that doesn’t tell me _why_. I was only a sad, frightened girl; what danger was I to you then?”

“Sansa,” Jon says, his hand gentle on her sweat-soaked back. His voice rough with sleep. “Who are you talking to?”

Cersei grins, her expression turned suddenly predatory. “Look at him – so eager to offer comfort. So devoted. It’s a wonder you’ve resisted this long.” She leans in close, like they are intimate friends sharing a confidence. “But why should you deny yourself? He’s yours, isn’t he?” 

“Don’t talk about him,” Sansa says, breathing hard, the words like venom on her tongue. “Don’t even _look_ —”

“Sansa,” Jon says again, cupping her cheek, turning her face towards his. “Whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t real. It’s the fever working on your mind.” His cool fingers slip to her forehead, to the molten skin at the back of her neck. “Gods, you’re on _fire_. Noya!”

“I have to ask her,” Sansa says, her eyes drawn back to the smiling Queen, the grinning revenant standing alone in a shadowed corner of the room. “I have to know why. There has to be a _reason_ —”

Noya rushes in with a basin of water, and soon she is lying prone on the bed and there are cold, wet cloths pressed to her temples, to her scarred chest and shaking wrists. It’s too much; Sansa tries to push them away, but Noya seizes her arms to hold her still. “ _Please_ ,” Jon begs, his gentle hands like ice; Noya curses her, furious and choked with tears. 

 _This is what it looks like_ , Sansa thinks, far away. _This is what it always looks like, just before they die._

The Queen walks closer, a regal blur of scarlet and gold. She is beautiful – the only real thing in the world. “Here is your reason, little dove,” Cersei says in a voice like the ringing of bells. “I feared you would replace me. I feared you would _become_ me.” She smiles a mother’s smile. “And wasn’t I right to be afraid?”

The rain stops. 

Sansa hears the moment it happens, the moment the steady drum of it against the roof disappears. The silence is enormous. The sound of their breathing fills the room. 

“I’m all right,” Sansa says into the quiet, and it sounds true. She feels disgusting, her robe clinging to her skin with sweat, her hair limp and dirty, but the terrible heat inside her is fading. Bleeding out of her with every breath. “Noya—”

“Your fever’s breaking. You’re going to be fine.” Noya wrings a cloth out over the basin and wipes the perspiration from Sansa’s forehead. She takes a deep, unsteady breath. “Thank the gods.”

Jon just looks at her. He stands beside the bed and says nothing, his eyes full of words she cannot read.  

“You should both get some rest,” Sansa says, and falls into a dreamless sleep. 

 

++

 

A week later, she’s well enough to walk to the godswood. 

Now that the rains have ended, true spring has come to Winterfell. The air smells of green and growing things, and at the base of the heart tree the ground is lush with moss and new clover. She hears birds among the branches.

The walk from her chambers isn’t far, but her chest aches with every breath; her legs tremble when she bends to sit among the weirwood’s roots. _I cannot afford to be weak_ , she thinks, and breathes carefully through her nose until the pain recedes.

She hears footsteps approaching. One of her Queensguard discreetly clears his throat and says, “Lord Commander Snow, Your Grace.” 

Sansa sighs and tips her head back against the heart tree. “Thank you, Ser Gerold. You may wait for us at the gate.”

Ser Gerold bows and leads the other guards back towards the castle, passing Jon on their way. He’s dressed simply in black, without armour or furs; without Longclaw at his side, he looks almost naked. He bows to her. “Your Grace.” 

“Oh, shut up,” she says, and he grins.  

“How are you feeling?” 

“Tired of that question. I assume Noya sent you to check up on me?” 

“I sent myself, at her suggestion.” He sits on a nearby stone, elbows resting on his knees. “She wants to fuss over you, but can’t stand being the sort of person who makes a fuss. I’m worried she’s going to strain something.” 

Sansa gives him a wan smile. “I told her to leave, you know. When the fever first started, before the quarantine. I ordered her to go.” 

He raises his eyebrows. “And how did she take that?” 

“Not so well as you did.” She looks down, rubbing her bare hands together. There’s still a slight chill in the air, though it’s fading fast. “Will you stay for the funerals tomorrow?”

“Of course.” She can feel his eyes on her; she doesn’t look up to meet them. When he speaks again, his voice is soft. “Noya says we lost fifty-three in all.”

Fifty-three people dead in the span of a single moon. In springtime. In _peace_. Sansa nods, ignoring the breathless ache in her chest.  

“It would have been many more than that,” he says, “if you hadn’t sent the children and the old away in time. If you’d let the sickness spread beyond Winterfell.”  

“Yes, they’re all so lucky to have me as their queen. Let’s see how lucky they feel tomorrow, when they’re mourning their dead.” She stands on shaking legs, locking her knees to stay upright. “If you’ll excuse me, Lord Commander. I have work to attend to.”

Jon stands and watches as she walks away from the heart tree, wobbling slightly with every other step. He does not try to stop or help her. He doesn’t take her arm, or block her path. Instead he waits until she’s beyond the shadow of its branches and says, “Who did you see?”  

She stops walking. “What?”

“The night your fever broke. You were talking to someone; who did you see?”

She turns and looks at him. His steady, familiar face, dappled in sunlight. She opens her mouth to lie. To give him any answer but the truth. “Cersei Lannister,” she says. “As I knew her, when I was a child.” 

She can read no judgment or surprise in his expression. He only nods and says, “Tyrion told me you’d grieved for her. When you learned how she died.”   

She crosses her arms over her stomach, her face hot with something almost like shame. “I hated her.”   

He walks towards her, stepping carefully around the stones and seedling plants. “There was a man I knew in the Watch. He was master-at-arms at Castle Black, and he hated me the moment he met me. He mocked me, humiliated me, tried to turn our brothers against me – all when I was only a boy, a new recruit who hadn’t even said my vows yet. He made himself my enemy, and for what?” He stops walking, close but not close enough to touch. “He was petty and spiteful and cruel, but I learned from him. Things I might never have learned if he’d been kind.” 

She steps closer. “How did he die?” 

“I hanged him for murder.” 

Her eyes are drawn to Jon’s chest, to the black wool of his jerkin and the terrible scars that lie beneath. She reaches out, laying her hand lightly over his heart; his breath catches. Her eyes dart to his lips.

“We’re more than just the people who’ve hurt us,” he says. “We don’t forget them, but we don’t let them rule us either. Not anymore.” He covers her bare hand with his. “In a thousand years, Cersei Lannister couldn’t dream of the woman you’ve become.”  

A breeze rustles the leaves of the heart tree, scattering new patterns of sunlight and shade across their faces. In shadow or sun, his eyes are the same – dark, and kind, and true. Her fingers curl against his chest; a slow smile teases the corners of her mouth. “Jon Snow. So wise in your old age.”  

He laughs. “You might be the first person ever to call me that, even in jest.” He squeezes her hand once, then releases it. “We should get you back to your chambers. Noya will butcher me if I let you tire yourself.” 

“If you _let_ me,” she mutters darkly, but takes his arm when he offers it. They only make it a few steps before an enormous white direwolf comes barreling out the underbrush, leaping towards them like an excited pup. 

“Ghost!” Sansa drops to one knee, and the wolf runs into her open arms. He rubs his muzzle against her cheek; she digs her fingers into the thick furred ruff at his neck. “You poor thing,” she coos, picking the burrs and thorns from his matted coat. “Doesn’t Jon brush you at all? All this nasty old winter fur—”

“Sansa, he’s a _wolf_.”

“That’s no excuse,” she says, looking up at him through narrowed eyes. Ghost pants happily at them both, then rests his massive head against her breast. Jon turns faintly pink. 

“You’ll get fur all over your dress,” he says, sounding strangled.    

She wrests free a particularly large thorn from behind Ghost’s ear and grins. “I think I’ll live.”

He stands by as she works, his gaze on the trees around them. He shifts from one foot to the other. “People are calling me the White Wolf again. They whisper it when they think I can’t hear.” 

Her hands still. “Well,” she says, “that would be because of the song.” 

“What song?”

“They started singing it after your last visit.” Ghost nudges her, and she combs her fingers through his fur, carefully avoiding Jon’s eyes. “It’s a ballad about a man who’s been banished beyond the Wall. He asks a wildling witch to turn him into a direwolf so he can return south and be reunited with his beloved.”

“His beloved,” Jon repeats flatly.

Her face heats. “Yes,” she says, “his beloved. He sneaks into her castle under cover of dark to scratch and whine at her chamber door. Her kiss returns him to his former self, but only for one night – when the sun rises, she wakes to find her lover gone and a direwolf in her bed.” She hesitates, then looks up at him. “It’s called _The White Wolf and the Winter Queen_.”

He steps back, his face a frozen blank. “ _Sansa_.”

“I know.”   

“You let them sing this?” he says, his voice tinged with panic.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m hardly going to rip anyone’s tongue out for it, am I? And it’s not as if they use our names.”

“This isn’t funny, Sansa. Your people are singing songs about, about me _dishonoring you—_ ”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she says. “In the song we’ve been secretly married for years.”  

“Oh, well, that’s just _fine_ then,” he says waspishly, and stalks off into the trees. Ghost watches him go, then tips his head to one side and gives her a questioning look. 

“It’s probably the brother-sister thing,” she tells the wolf. “He might need a moment to walk it off.” 

Ghost licks her cheek. She scratches behind the direwolf’s remaining ear, trying not to think of the warmth of Jon’s body beside hers as he slept. The smell of him lingering in her bed. The sickly-sweet echo of Cersei Lannister’s voice, saying:  _He's yours, isn’t he?_  

He comes back a few minutes later, his shoulders rigid. “Sorry,” he says. 

She arches an eyebrow at him. 

He shrugs stiffly. “It’s only a song.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” She stands, brushing white clumps of fur from her skirts. “People like romantic stories, no matter how silly they are. If I tried to stop people singing it, that would change the story – and probably not in a way we’d like. Better to let it run its course.”  

He relaxes a little. “You’re right. I’m sure it’ll be forgotten soon enough.”

The Queen in the North keeps no Master of Whispers, but Sansa has her own methods of gathering information. There have been rumors about Sansa Stark and her bastard brother since long before Varys shared Jon’s true parentage with the world; even without the song people would still tell stories of their doomed love and tragic separation and the secret wedding in the godswood, their vows spoken moments before the Night King attacked. They are simply too good a story to go untold. 

If Daenerys had lived or died a hero, things might have been different; they might have called the song _The White Wolf and the Dragon Queen_ , and sung it through all the Seven Kingdoms. Jon might even have liked it then, instead of fleeing in disgust. 

He offers her his arm. “You all right?”

“Fine,” she says, giving him a thin smile. “Just tired.”

Jon shakes his head. “Noya’s going to murder me,” he sighs, and leads her out of the wood.  

 

++ 

 

Two days later he takes his leave of her in the courtyard, in full view of half the castle. Ghost is nowhere to be seen. 

“Your Grace,” Jon says, dropping into a deep formal bow. “As always, I thank you for your generous hospitality.” 

She accepts his thanks with a regal incline of her head. “Thank you, Lord Commander, for your assistance in Winterfell’s time of need.” In an undertone she adds, “You’re being an ass.” 

“I’m protecting your honor,” he whispers back fiercely. 

“You’re not,” she says through her teeth. “You’re just making it look like we have something to hide.” She fixes a fond smile on her face, takes both his hands firmly in hers and says, “Travel safely, my lord, and return to us in summer.” Then she leans in close and gives him a sisterly peck on the cheek. 

As she pulls away, she sees his eyelids flutter closed. His throat works as he swallows. 

“ _Jon_ ,” she breathes, and his hands jerk free of her grip. 

“Until summer,” he says, and is gone.


	3. Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story's rating has been upped to Explicit. Content warnings in the end notes.

He returns four years later, at the height of summer. 

Winterfell in summer is the Winterfell of their childhood; the castle is thriving, alive with the clatter of wagons and the ringing of hammers and the shouts of working men. Stonemasons and builders and blacksmiths, carpenters, farmers, and weavers – they’ve all flocked to the Queen’s Capital, bringing wives and husbands and children enough to fill the empty North. 

Winterfell is full of summer children, always underfoot – playing soldiers with sticks and wooden swords, chasing after sheep and goats and dogs. Few can remember the wars of winter, or even the great sickness brought by the spring; those tales are only fairy stories to them. Legends of a dark time, long ago. 

“Where did they all come from?” Jon says. He leans on the railing beside her, looking down at the bustling courtyard below. As they watch the tanner’s little girl leaps like a frog onto her sister’s back, and both children collapse to the ground, giggling madly.  

 _Where did they come from, indeed_. Sansa’s lips curve in a teasing smile. “Well, my lord, when a seamstress and a castle guard love each other very much—”  

“Very funny.” His tone is dry, but she can see the twitch of laughter at the corner of his mouth. A glint of mischief in his eye.  “Do you remember the time Arya caught Robb kissing Alys Cassel behind the kitchens?”  

“Gods yes,” Sansa says, gleeful at the memory. “Arya talked about it for weeks! She told everyone he looked like a starving horse at a salt lick. Poor Robb.”

“Poor me, you mean. I’m the one who had to explain to Arya and Bran why a man couldn’t get a babe on a woman just by kissing her.”

Sansa gasps. “ _No_.”

“I begged them to ask your lady mother instead. She would’ve gutted me if she’d found out.” He stares into the distance, clearly reliving the horror in traumatic detail. “Arya had so many _questions_.” 

“What did you even tell them?” Sansa asks, laughing. “It wasn’t like you’d ever—”

“I knew the basics,” he protests, a touch of his old prickliness in his voice; it only makes her laugh harder. He watches her, fighting back a smile. “Anyway, I knew more than Robb. Alys never went near him again.”

Sansa leans a hand against the railing, looking down again at the people below. “Probably because Arya told the whole castle she’d caught them together. It wasn’t as if Robb could have married her.”        

Jon frowns. “It wasn’t like that. We were so young – Robb wasn’t even fifteen.”

“By my fifteenth name day, I’d been married almost a year.” She pulls a raven scroll from the pocket hidden within her sleeve. “Tyrion sent this from the Kingsroad. It arrived this morning.” 

She offers him the scroll, but he doesn’t take it. “Does he say who’s travelling with them?”

“Grandmaester Tarly and Lord Gendry Baratheon accompany their king, as do Lord Commander Tarth and the rest of the Kingsguard. I have to wonder who they’re leaving in charge.” She smoothes the curling parchment between her fingers. “Bran’s being very mysterious about his reasons for the visit.”

“Well, that’s Bran,” Jon says easily, as though their little brother has always been an eerie-voiced purveyor of prophecy and doom. “I’ll just be glad to see him again. And the others – I bet Sam has some stories to tell.” 

She thinks Jon’s friends will be pleased to see the changes these last six years have wrought in him. He carries his burdens more lightly than he once did; his smiles, always rare, now truly reach his eyes. He gives her one now, thinking of his friend Samwell and his healthy, growing family. Of Sam and Gilly’s summer children. 

She tucks Tyrion’s scroll back into her sleeve. “Jon—”

“You look like a fucking kneeler!” Tormund’s voice booms from the other end of the bridge. He’s following close on Noya’s heels, his fingers picking at the collar of her tunic. “What is this, wool? Where are your furs, woman? Where’s your _pride_?”

Noya slaps his hand away. “It’s summer in the south, you great twat. If I wore furs I’d smell as bad as you – like a rotting dead animal.” 

“Jon Snow, do you hear what she says to me?” Tormund walks up and presents himself to the both of them, his arms spread wide. “Do I smell like a rotting animal to you?” 

His stink is less _rotting animal_ and more _large,_ _heavily sweating man_ ; it’s not pleasant, but Sansa has definitely smelled worse. “Noya’s nose must be more delicate than mine,” she says demurely, looking up at Tormund through her eyelashes. “I certainly have no objections.” 

Jon and Noya both scowl at her, but Tormund roars with laughter. “The Winter Queen likes my smell!” He claps Jon hard on the back. “What do you say to that, Snow? Does it make you want to _howl_?” 

Jon closes his eyes. “Bringing you was a mistake.” 

Tormund grins. “You always say that, and then you always need me to kill someone.” He waggles his eyebrows at Sansa. “Is there anything _you_ need me to do, Your Grace?”

To his obvious surprise, Sansa reaches out and takes one of his large hands in hers. “Only for you to protect and care for Jon as you already do. Your friendship means a great deal to him.”

Tormund sobers at once, his pale eyes gravely earnest as they hold her gaze. “He’s a miserable cunt, but I love him like my own brother. If I were to die for him, I’d call it a good death.” 

Jon tenses beside her. “No one is dying for me.” 

Sansa presses Tormund’s hand in silent thanks. “Shut up, Jon.”  

“Yes – shut up, Jon.” Tormund winks at her, then turns back to Noya with a broad smile. “You see? We gingers understand each other. We are kiss—”

“Kissed by fire. Yes, we know. We _all_ know.” Noya shoulders past him and gives Sansa a significant look. “Xhaquo is looking for you. He wants to talk about the preparations for your brother’s visit.” 

The visit, and the contents of Tyrion’s letter. Sansa’s teeth worry at her bottom lip.  

“Xhaquo?” Jon says, frowning at the unfamiliar name. 

“Our new maester. The Citadel sent him last year.” Sansa touches the scroll tucked inside her sleeve. “I’ll meet with him in the council room before dinner. If you’re able, I’d like you all to join us.”

Tormund blinks. “All of us? Even me?”

“Even _him_?” Noya says. 

“Of course.” Sansa turns away, avoiding Jon’s curious stare. “I’ll be glad of your good counsel. Noya?” 

Noya nods, her sharp face troubled. She follows Sansa out of the midday sun, into the stone-shaded corridors of the Great Keep. 

 

++

 

The first thing Maester Xhaquo had said after _Honored to meet you, Your Grace_ had been, “You should know, the Archmaester only sent me to Winterfell because he hates me.”  

Baffled, Sansa had stared down from her throne and said, “Does he?” 

“Oh yes,” the maester had said, looking earnestly up at her through his round copper spectacles. “It’s because of the soup, you see.” 

The tale that followed had been a fascinating window into the complex social and culinary politics of the Citadel. Xhaquo was not the only man from the Summer Isles to take maester’s vows, but he was the only one to stand up in the middle of dinner and declare that only a barbarian would serve soup hot instead of chilled. The Archmaester, who had been mid-slurp at the time, had demanded an apology; Xhaquo had refused.

“I could not apologize,” Xhaquo explained, “because it was a statement of fact, not an insult. In a civilized man’s eyes, all Westerosi are barbarians and savages. That is what makes you all so fascinating!”

“Who the fuck eats cold soup,” Noya had said, and Sansa’s not had a moment of peace since. 

 

++

 

Xhaquo takes one look at Jon and Tormund and says, “As ever, Your Grace, your choice of advisors mystifies me.” He pretends not to notice when Noya makes a rude gesture in his direction.

Sansa takes the seat at the head of the council room table. “Lord Commander Snow, Tormund Giantsbane – meet Maester Xhaquo of the Citadel. He makes friends wherever he goes.”

“The queen is telling a polite untruth,” the maester says, his many-linked chain rattling as he sits. “People very rarely like me.”

Tormund sits beside him, leaning in uncomfortably close. “I like you,” he says, his nose inches from Xhaquo’s face. “You have kind eyes.”

Xhaquo squeaks. “Your Grace—”

Sansa slips the raven scroll from her sleeve. “This morning I received a raven from Tyrion Lannister, the Hand of the King in the South. There are two points of interest within his letter that I would like to discuss.” She clears her throat. “The first is the joint royal pardon, to be signed by both King Bran and myself, of Lord Commander Jon Snow.”

Jon stiffens in his chair, his expression a sudden horrible blank. “No.”

“Yes,” Sansa says flatly. “The second issue—”

He stands. “Sansa, _no_. I will not accept a pardon.”

“It is not a matter of accepting or not accepting,” Xhaquo says. “Once it’s signed, you will be a free man. At that time you may choose to remain with the Night’s Watch, but it will be _your choice_ – not a punishment forced upon you by the general of an invading foreign army.”

Jon’s hands clench into fists; Sansa fights the instinct to reach for him. “Bran and I have been planning this since the day the Unsullied left King’s Landing,” she says. “We needed time to secure support from Dorne and the Iron Islands, but now that we have—” 

“I murdered a woman in cold blood. A woman I loved. A woman who _trusted_ me, and I put a knife in her heart.” He turns and looks only at her, and for a moment it’s as if they are standing on that pier again, both fragile with grief and regret. “What I did can’t go unpunished, Sansa. You know it can’t.”

Her eyes sting. “You _saved_ us. You deserve—”

“If I got what I deserved,” he says harshly, “I would still be dead.”    

Tormund steps up behind him and lays a hand on his shoulder. His voice, when he speaks, is unexpectedly soft. “Let winter’s queen decide what it is you deserve, Jon Snow. She’s much smarter than you.”

Jon swallows, looking down. “Aye. I know.” He sits again, his eyes on the table in front of him. His face like stone. “What was the other thing you wanted to discuss?” 

“Lord Tyrion has asked for the queen’s hand in marriage,” Xhaquo says briskly. “His offer is promising, if unconventional; I think she should consider accepting him.” 

Beside her, Jon has gone rigid with shock. “Sansa—”

Tormund frowns. “Which Lannister is that? The little one who talks too much, or the sad one who fucks his sister?”

“The little one,” Noya says. “The sister-fucker is dead.” She leans forward, her arms folded on the table. “And what was the little Lannister’s offer, exactly? Not all of us stole a look at the letter as it came off the raven’s leg.”

Xhaquo sniffs. “You wouldn’t have been able to read it even if you had,” he says, and Sansa stands, her chair shrieking across the floor. They all turn to look at her, struck suddenly, blessedly silent.

Sansa unfurls the slip of parchment in her hands and begins to read aloud. “Your Grace, I make this offer out of friendship, a proposal from one realist to another – we are neither of us likely to love again. Instead, let us be allies. If we marry, I will forswear any right to Winterfell or the North; you will retain your throne, and I will continue to serve in King’s Landing as your brother’s Hand. 

“If we should be fortunate enough to have children, the first will be your heir, and the second will inherit Casterly Rock. They may all be Starks if you wish it; I am content that the Lannister name should die with me. I would be overjoyed to discuss any concerns not addressed here when I arrive in Winterfell in a week’s time. Yours affectionately, Tyrion Lannister.” She sits again at the table. “Well?” 

“No other lord in Westeros would make you such an offer,” Xhaquo says, a smug smile on his round face. “The Starks would retain the Northern throne and in time become the Wardens of the West. Your family’s influence could continue in the Six Kingdoms long after your brother’s reign ends, securing the North’s independence for generations to come.” The maester shrugs. “And he wouldn’t necessarily be an unpleasant bedmate, either. Rumor has it he is an accomplished lover – for a Westerosi.”

“And where have you heard that?” Noya asks, a dangerous edge to her voice. “From some King’s Landing whore?” 

“An Oldtown whore, actually,” Xhaquo says, unabashed. “Lord Tyrion had quite the reputation in his youth.”

Noya bares her teeth in an expression worryingly unlike a grin. “You want her to marry the son of the man who murdered her mother because he might be a good _fuck_?” 

“Technically, she has already married him. This would just be a more permanent arrangement.” 

“Wait,” Tormund says, looking away from Jon’s slowly purpling face, “what do you mean, she’s already married him? I thought she fed her monster husband to the dogs?”

“I was married to Tyrion first,” Sansa says. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from someplace far away. “We had the marriage annulled years ago, on the grounds that it was unconsummated.”

Tormund turns to Noya, who explains: “It means they never fucked. In kneeler marriages, you’ve got to fuck or it doesn’t count.”

Xhaquo sighs, adjusting his spectacles. “Such an unhealthy attitude towards sex. Little wonder they’re all so violent and miserable.”

“It seems to me,” Jon says, looking at once violent and miserable, “that the first question should be whether Sansa wants to marry anyone at all.”

Once again, four sets of eyes fix on her. She sits tall, her hands folded in her lap. “If the Stark line is to continue, one of us must marry and have children. Bran cannot; Arya will not. Jon is a brother of the Night’s Watch, and I—” She takes a slow, steadying breath. “I would be happy,” she says, “to never marry again. But the North needs an heir.”     

“You don’t need to marry to have children,” Noya tells her. “Take a lover, have a few bastards, and legitimize them. You’re the fucking Queen in the North; why tie yourself to any man, much less one you don’t love or desire?”

“Noya’s right,” Tormund says. “Better to take a lover than a husband. Then if he doesn’t please you, you can just send him to the Wall to freeze his cock off with us.” 

Xhaquo is watching her closely, his gaze shifting between her carefully neutral expression and Jon’s glower. “Selecting a paramour could be a viable alternative,” Xhaquo says, “but it’s not without risk. If your bannermen dislike the man you choose—”

Noya snorts. “Because the Northmen are so fond of Lannisters.” 

“That would be an obstacle, yes.” Xhaquo leans across the table towards Jon. “What do you say, Lord Commander? You know Lord Tyrion better than anyone here but the queen.” 

There’s an uneasy silence. Jon shifts in his chair. “He’s a man of good intentions, and I think his offer of friendship is sincere. Beyond that—” He turns towards her, his gaze lowered so he does not meet her eyes. “He’s not the man I would choose for you, but it’s not my choice to make. You know your own heart.”  

Under his breath, Tormund begins to hum _The White Wolf and the Winter Queen_ ; Noya kicks him hard under the table. The humming stops with a grunt.

Sansa feels herself flush red from her chest to the roots of her hair. Jon stands and gives her an abrupt bow. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says, and strides out of the room. The door slams shut behind him.

“How interesting,” Xhaquo murmurs. A moment later he yelps as Noya’s boot makes contact with his shin. “Your Grace!”

“Stop torturing the maester, Noya. You know it only encourages him.” She rubs a hand over her eyes. A vicious headache is beginning to throb just behind her temples. “They sing about us as far north as the Wall?” 

“They sing about you everywhere,” Tormund says, grinning. “But not where Jon Snow can hear. Bad things happen if you do that.”     

Xhaquo slides his chair away from Noya’s, still cradling his bruised shin. “The song does have a very appealing melody, Your Grace. I heard it often in Oldtown before I came north.” 

“Of course you did.” She stands, smoothing her skirts. “I need to go prepare for dinner. Thank you all for your unvarnished opinions. I’ll consider your advice carefully as I make my decision.”

“In other words,” Noya says with a daggered smile, “fuck off.”

 

++ 

 

Xhaquo and Tormund fuck off immediately, but Noya follows her back to her chambers. The late evening sun slants through the windows, filling the room with a hazy glow. “You’re squinting,” Noya says, closing the door behind them. “All our nattering must’ve given you a headache.” 

“It will pass.” Sansa pours them each a cup of wine. “Do you really think I should take a lover?” 

Noya shrugs. “It would solve some problems. Create others. Sex always does.” She sits in her usual chair, curling her legs beneath her. “How do you feel, when you think of letting a man touch you?” 

Five years ago, the question alone would have been enough to paralyze her. Now Sansa sips her wine and says, “Depends on the man.” 

“Ah.” Her expression turns a little smug. “That’s what I thought.” 

Sansa crosses to the cold fireplace, avoiding Noya’s knowing eyes. She looks down at the ashes in the grate. “I care for Tyrion, but I worry about his judgment. If we were to have children—”

“ _Blonde_ children,” Noya says, half horrified, half delighted. “A dozen little fair-haired Starks, all of them clever as sin and drunk as sailors—”

Sansa sets her cup down with a clatter. “Do you think you’re helping? Because you are not helping.”

“Aren’t I?” Noya shakes her head, her mouth a hard line. “This is why that maester of yours is so dangerous. He looks at you with those big soft eyes and speaks with the voice of the _civilized man_ and he tells you that the fucking crown on your head is the only part of you that matters. Like you’d be any kind of queen at all if you weren’t a person too.”   

Sansa sits across from her, in her usual chair. “You’re afraid I’ll be unhappy.”

“I’m afraid you’ll break your own heart and call it duty.” 

She sighs. “Noya—”

“Do you even want to be a mother?” she says. “Not every woman does. Have you ever even thought about it?”

“Only every time Ramsey came inside me,” Sansa says. “Only every time Littlefinger called me his love and whispered his poison into my ear.” She lifts her chin and forces herself to hold her friend’s stricken gaze. “I don’t know if I want children. But there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, and if I don’t bear them there will be no more Starks.” 

She can see in Noya’s eyes all the things the wildling wishes she could say. _It’s only a castle. It’s only a name_. _The dead are dead – you can only wither in their shadow._ But Noya doesn’t say any of it. Instead she reaches across the space between them and takes Sansa’s hand. 

“All right,” she says, squeezing Sansa’s fingers tight. “Let’s get you a babe, then.”  

 

++

 

When Jon comes to her chambers that night he finds her at her desk, trying without much success to tally the grain records with one hand and remove the pins from her hair with the other. 

He’d been quiet and withdrawn at dinner, but he smiles when he sees her struggling with a particularly stubborn pin. “Don’t you have a maid for that?” 

“She’s terrible at sums.” Sansa winces at the sharp pull of a knot, and her quill skips across the page. “I sent her home for the night. Her father is ill.” 

“Let me. You’ll get ink in your hair.” He stands behind her and carefully eases the pin free from its tangle. He hardly touches her at all. “Did you ever consider maybe doing just one thing at a time?” 

“If I did that, I’d never sleep.” She tilts her head slightly, giving him silent permission to remove the next pin; he hesitates only a moment before she feels the gentle tug of his fingers in her hair. 

She’s been neglecting her ledgers, consumed with Bran’s rapidly approaching visit and the endless negotiations of etiquette and logistics it entails. It’s strangely soothing to sit and think only of the columns of numbers before her, of the bushels of wheat and rye and barley they represent and the steady expansion of their winter stores. Jon’s fingers work slowly, coaxing her hair from its coils, pins, and braids, deft even in this unfamiliar task. He unwinds her, unfurling the needle-sharp ache at her scalp and temples. Her sigh of relief sounds loud in the quiet. 

His hands still. For a long moment, neither of them speaks. Then he says, “I could brush it for you, if you want.”

She should say no. Ask him why he’s come alone to her chambers at this hour of night. Instead she nods and says, “Please.”

He finds the hairbrush on her vanity. He lingers there a moment, looking at her small array of powders and lotions. “I wanted to apologize for today.” 

“There’s no need. I knew you wouldn’t take the news about the pardon well.” An irregularity in the rye bushel count distracts her; she distantly registers his warmth at her back as he gathers her hair into his hands.  

“I meant how I left. I shouldn’t have walked out like that.” He starts brushing at the end of her hair, teasing out the tangles there before working up towards the crown of her head. Her mother had brushed Arya’s hair the same way when they were children – stubborn Arya who hated staying still, whose hair was always a nest of knots and snarls. Arya, who’d been Jon’s true sister as she never had. “Tormund said you haven’t made a decision. That you’re still considering Tyrion’s offer.”

“It’s a good offer. The best I’m likely to get.” She writes the rye balance in its proper place, nib sliding evenly across the paper. “I won’t accept it, though.”

The hairbrush stops mid-stroke. “You won’t,” he says.

She turns and looks at him over her shoulder. “What benefit for Tyrion is there in marrying me? The Six Kingdoms and the North are already bound by blood; why waste a valuable marriage alliance on his king’s sister? If he were smart he’d go to Dorne or the Reach for a wife, maybe even the Iron Islands. He has nothing to gain with me.”  

“Maybe he loves you.” 

Sansa scoffs. “Even if he did, we’d spend most of our married lives fifteen hundred miles apart. Hardly a recipe for a grand romance.” She turns back to her ledger. “If Tyrion loves anything, it’s his guilt. Since the day King’s Landing burned he’s spent every sober moment working to atone for his part in it. Marrying me again, protecting me as he couldn’t or _wouldn’t_ do before – it’s too perfect a redemption to resist.”

Jon sits in the chair beside her desk, hairbrush still in his hands. “What will you do instead?” 

She sighs, resting her chin in her palm. “I’ve no idea. Noya says I should take a lover, but it would be – difficult. For all his faults, Tyrion may be the only man alive I’d trust to share my bed.” She pauses, recalling the fever and the comforting weight of Jon’s body beside hers. The brush of his fingers against her shoulder. “Aside from you, of course.”

It’s a casual enough remark. A simple observation – they had slept beside each other for hours, innocent as children – but the silence that follows simmers with tension, a thickness in the air. She looks over and sees him staring at her with wide, stunned eyes. His lips slightly parted. 

“You know we’d never be able to marry,” he says.

The quill drops from her hand. “What?” 

“Even after the pardon, even if I forswore all rights to Winterfell and the North, we could never marry. It would weaken your claim to the throne.”

She shakes her head, dazed. “I’m a woman ruling alone. Marrying any man would weaken my claim to the throne.”

“It would be worse with me. I was their king once; there would always be whispers that I should be king again. I won’t endanger everything you’ve worked for.” She can see his chest move as he breathes. Its rapid rise and fall. “We can’t marry. But if you wanted, I could—”

Understanding dawns in a shiver of heat down her spine. An instinctive curl of her fingers. “You could give me a child. An heir.” He nods, and she swallows hard, her mouth dry. “Jon—”

“You would legitimize them. They wouldn’t be bastards.”

“Of course I would. I—” She stands, walking to the window on unsteady legs. She needs the chill of the night air against her face. The distance between them. “It – it makes a certain kind of sense. Half the kingdom thinks we’re lovers already.”

 _Lovers_. The word had seemed mundane, even silly, when Noya had first said it in the council room that afternoon; now it feels shocking. Volatile. As if in saying it aloud she has stripped naked in front of him, exposing everything. 

But when she looks, there is no judgment in his eyes – only careful affection and his usual warm regard. She’d imagined for a moment she’d seen something hotter, some strong emotion quickly restrained, but it was only her own strange longing reflected back at her. Refracted by candlelight. She steels herself and says, cool as winter, “You realize we would need to have sex.”

“Aye,” Jon says, a sardonic twist to his voice. “As we discussed, I’m familiar with the basics.”

She takes a step towards him. “We may not have been close as children, but you did once think of me as a sister. Could you—” She makes a hand gesture she immediately regrets, and he begins to laugh. She folds her arms tightly across her chest, flustered. “You know what I mean.” 

“I do know, and I’ll manage. What about you? Would you be able to—” He makes an obscure motion with his fingers she doesn’t entirely understand, though she’d rather die than admit it. 

“I’ll manage,” she says frostily. “Though in my experience, your active participation is rather more integral to the process than my own.”  

All humor drains out of his expression. “Sansa.” 

She rolls her eyes, prickling with irritation and an odd sort of chagrin. “Oh, stop looking at me like that. I’m fine.” She plops down in her usual chair by the fireplace, her hair falling loose around her shoulders. “Do you even want children?” 

“I want you to have what you want,” he says immediately. He’s so obviously sincere; it’s unbearable.

“What if I want you to stay in Winterfell after the child is born?” 

He looks down at his hands, his jaw tight. “If we do this,” he says, “I’ll go wherever you like.”

She remembers the heat in his voice as he’d refused the pardon. As he’d demanded punishment for what he’d done. _Tyrion isn’t the only one in love with his own guilt_ , she thinks, combing unsteady fingers through her well-brushed hair. _And I am too perfect a redemption to resist._  

“There’s no need to decide tonight,” she says. “We should think on it and speak again in a few days.”

He nods, shifting forward in his chair. “I want to help you, Sansa. However much or little you want from me, that’s what I’ll give.” He looks up and meets her eyes. “I swear to you I’ll never ask for anything more.”

 _Of course you won’t_ , she thinks but does not say. _I’m the greedy one. I’m the one who wants too much._ Her fingers clench in the soft wool of her skirts. “I know,” she says. “Thank you, Jon.” 

He pushes himself to his feet, turning away. “Goodnight,” he says, and leaves.  

 

++

 

The next few days are very odd.

She had thought Jon would avoid her, regretting his impulsive offer in the unsentimental light of day; instead he hovers close by, standing at her shoulder during audiences with smallfolk and bannermen, sitting beside her at meetings and at meals. It reminds her of the moons after they first retook Winterfell, when he was king and she was his sister and they were so seldom apart. 

But now he rarely speaks, preferring to watch and listen, breaking his silence only to support her when others disagree. He is present, but careful not to draw attention. Even with him beside her, the people look to their queen for guidance and for aid.

“Is it just me,” Noya says after all but Xhaquo and Sansa have left the council room, “or is Lord Snow courting you?” 

“He does seem very attentive.” Xhaquo folds his hands into his long maester’s sleeves. “Perhaps Lord Tyrion has some stiff competition?” 

“I’m not marrying Tyrion,” Sansa says, not for the first time. Xhaquo heaves a deep sigh. 

“Please, Your Grace,” he says, “let an old man have his dreams,” though he’s no older than Noya, or Tyrion himself. He shakes his head. “An alliance with the King’s Hand, a southern warden of Lord Tyrion’s considerable influence—”

“I am going to throw you out a window,” Noya says. 

Xhaquo gives a snide little sniff. “As if you could lift me,” he says, and Noya is standing, clearly ready to make her best attempt when Sansa intercedes. 

“Enough. The Tyrion issue is settled. I’ll inform him of my decision when he arrives.” She looks down, rubbing at a small ink stain on the sleeve of her dress. “I assume you aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed Jon’s behavior.” 

“He isn’t exactly a subtle man,” Xhaquo says. There’s a delicate silence; her closest advisors share a look. “It would be a mistake to marry him, Your Grace.” 

She bristles at the kindness in the maester’s voice. The awful sympathy she sees in his eyes. “I appreciate your concern, but Jon and I are not considering marriage.” 

The maester relaxes. “Ah, good. He’s to be your paramour, then?”

Sansa blinks, a little disarmed by his reaction. “We’ve discussed the possibility. I was worried my bannermen might disapprove. The North is not Dorne.” 

“True – and yet, the North is changing. The lords of Karhold and Last Hearth are both natural sons legitimized by Your Grace; Northerners and the free folk intermarry and intermingle with ever greater frequency. Your bannermen have believed Jon Snow to be your lover for years, and none have objected. Not publicly, anyway.” 

Xhaquo shrugs, leaning back in his chair before he continues. “I won’t pretend he’s your best choice. Your children would be a quarter Targaryan, which is – less than ideal. And yet they’ll almost certainly have the Stark look, rugged and brooding as it is, which should balance things out nicely. And he’s a good man, well liked by your subjects, and very famously in love with you. So yes, I’d say you could do much worse than Lord Commander Snow.”

Sansa looks at Noya, who sighs. “You know I hate agreeing with him. Please don’t make me say it.” 

Sansa looks between them. “You both think I should pursue this?” 

Xhaquo nods. “If you won’t marry Lord Tyrion after his _exceptional_ offer, you’re unlikely to marry anyone. Better Jon Snow’s heirs than no heirs at all.”

“At least they won’t be blonde,” Noya says. She grins, but Sansa can hear the thread of worry in her friend’s voice. “You’re still very young. Are you sure you don’t want to wait a few more years, until you’re both less stupid?” 

“Noya!” Xhaquo cries, shocked and insulted on Her Grace’s behalf; Sansa only laughs. 

“To be honest,” she says, “I just don’t think we have that kind of time.” 

 

++

 

That night she summons Jon to her chambers.

She waits until her maid has finished readying her for bed to give the order. The girl rushes off, as eager to spread gossip as she is to pass along the request; by morning the whole castle will know that the queen saw the White Wolf alone in her bedchamber, though the hour was late and she was dressed only in her night shift and robe. 

“I think there’s someone out there giggling,” Jon says as she ushers him inside, closing the door firmly behind him. He takes in her silk nightclothes and loose hair with wary eyes. “Suppose this means you’ve made your decision?” 

Jon still wears the clothes he wore that day, breeches and shirt and leather jerkin; his hair is tied neatly back, doing little to hide the shadows beneath his eyes. He doesn’t look like a man come to visit his lover. “It’s not just my decision to make,” she says. “If you’ve changed your mind—”

“I haven’t.” He takes a step closer. “I’ll do whatever you want, Sansa. If you want me to go, I’ll go. If you want me to stay—”

She loosens the ties of her robe and lets it slip from her shoulders. The shift beneath is sleeveless white – opaque enough to preserve her modesty, immodest enough to expose the many scars marring her arms and chest. Not a flicker of desire shows in Jon’s face; his eyes never leave hers. 

Desire, she reminds herself, may be too much to ask – they are here for duty, not for passion. She drapes the robe over a chair, and finds the little bottle of linseed oil on her vanity table; Jon watches as she walks to the bed. She lies on top of the blankets, her hands clasped over her stomach.   

He swallows. “You look nervous.” 

She clutches the bottle of oil. “So do you.” 

“Aye,” he says with a weak smile. “That’s because I am.” He sits to take off his boots and remove his jerkin; it musses his hair as he draws it over his head. He comes and lies on the bed beside her, still dressed in his shirt and breeches. His gaze drifts to the bottle in her hands. “Is that—”

“I use it sometimes when I touch myself,” she says, a light tremor in her voice. A quiver of fear, or shame, or excitement. Anticipation. Her stomach swoops at sudden fixed darkness of his eyes. “I thought it might be helpful.” 

“Do you—” he begins hoarsely; he stops to clear his throat. “Do you want to do that now?”

She tries to picture it – pulling her shift to her waist, her fingers moving between her legs as he watches. Her face burns at the thought. If she’d been smart and prepared herself before calling him here, they could have skipped past all this awkward nonsense; he could have simply unlaced his breeches and—

“I could do it,” he says, “if you—”

“Yes.” She thrusts the bottle of oil at him. “Please.”

He takes the bottle. The cork comes loose with a quiet pop. 

Sansa watches as he dabs a little oil onto his fingers. _Not enough_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say. She pulls her shift up above her knees, spreading her legs so his hand can fit between. She feels his fingers, their tentative touch against the crease of her thigh. A knuckle slips between her folds. 

“Oh,” he says. “Are you—”

“Still very nervous,” she says, her eyes squeezed shut. “Might take a moment.”

The bed dips as Jon rolls towards her, onto his side; oiled fingers press in, finding the sensitive nub just above her entrance. He traces circles around it, too gently. “The new glass gardens you built seem to working well.” 

She cracks open one eye to look at him. “What?”

“I visited them the other day. Much bigger than the old ones. I’d forgotten how warm they are inside.” A calloused fingertip catches her at just the right angle, and she gasps. He immediately repeats the motion, increasing pressure. “I saw the lemon trees.” 

Her hips twitch towards his hand. “Citrus,” she says, “is an important, a dietary—”

“You make soap with it too, don’t you? I can smell it in your hair.” He gazes down at her, his breathing ragged. His face flushed. “Gods, Sansa, what should I—”

“Harder,” she says, and then it is almost perfect, pressure and friction and his hand working against her, his _eyes_ —

“That’s it,” he says, the words like a sigh, and she can feel herself softening, growing wet at his touch. She tries to hide her face in the pillow, her chest heaving. Her hands clutch the blankets beneath her. “It must have been difficult,” he says, “to transport all that glass. There must be hundreds of panels.” 

 _What fucking panels_ , she thinks, until she realizes he’s still talking about the godsdamned hothouses. She bites back a moan. “I didn’t transport it. Hired a master glassblower from – King’s Landing. Helped him bring his family north.” She shudders suddenly, clenching down on nothing. “ _Jon_.”

“I’ve got you,” he says, hardly touching her but for where his fingers stroke with now perfect pressure, spreading her slick. Exposing her to the air. He circles her entrance, and she whines. “Sansa, sweetling – when you touch yourself, do you put your fingers inside?” 

She nods, jerking her head against the pillow. 

“Do you want me to do that? Do you want my fingers inside you?” He kisses her temple, a maddening brush of lips and beard barely felt. Her hips stutter against his hand. “I’ll help you come, love, I promise I will, but first you have tell me—”

She reaches down and covers his hand with hers, guiding his fingers, pressing them deep into the well of heat inside her. Two fingers and she’s tight around them, stretched and aching and _wet_ ; Jon groans, and she feels him hard against her hip. 

“Oh gods,” he says, “oh _fuck_ ,” and then his thumb grazes her _just so_ and she’s coming, trembling around the fingers inside her as the world goes white. When her vision clears she sees him staring down at her face, stunned and panting, his hair disheveled. Loose strands curl into his eyes.   

“You should take off your breeches,” she says, breathing hard. Still holding his hand between her thighs. “Lie down on your back.” 

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, “whatever you want,” and draws his fingers slowly from her. His hand comes away shining wet, and for a moment he looks as if he means to smell it, or to _taste –_ but instead he rolls away, pulling at the laces of his breeches. His erection – his _cock_ – distends the fabric; he frees it and shoves the breeches down his legs, kicking them off the bed. 

She had thought he might need some assistance to become aroused enough to penetrate her; looking at him now, that clearly isn’t the case. He strokes himself twice with his slick right hand, the hand he used to make her come, and she pushes herself up onto her knees. 

Her legs are still quivering from her orgasm, the rest of her drunk on sensation and dread and hopeless desire; she moves to straddle his hips and wobbles, almost falling forward onto his chest. Jon catches her, his hands firm at her waist.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” she says, and he laughs. 

“You’re doing fine,” he says, smiling. His eyes crinkle at the corners. “You’re amazing.”   

“I feel like I’m about to fall off the bed.” The length of her shift is in her way; she gathers it up around her waist and looks down at the distance between his cock and her cunt. “Am I supposed to aim, or…?”

“I’ve got it,” he says quickly, reaching down to hold himself. “Just – in your own time. Slow as you need.”

Sansa lowers herself down, her spread thighs straining, his fingers at her entrance as he fits the head inside. Her hands land on his chest, still covered by his shirt – she clutches at the fabric as she eases him in, inhaling sharply at the stretch. It’s more like pressure than pain, a fullness that sparks lights behind her eyes and simmering heat in the pit of her stomach. It should feel wonderful, as potent and intoxicating as the curl of his fingers inside her. 

It shouldn’t feel like this. 

“We can stop,” Jon says. He’s lying perfectly still beneath her, his hands fisted in the blankets. She’s fully seated on his cock, so tight around him it must be painful, but all his attention is on her face. “We can stop right now,” he says. “If it’s not—”     

“Shut up and give me a second,” she says, her mouth dry with panic. She closes her eyes, but that’s worse, so much worse – she has to look at him, to see that it _is_ him and no one else. Jon’s cock hard inside her, Jon’s worried face and mussed hair and dark, wanting eyes. Jon, who brought her home. She’d know him anywhere.   

She rolls her hips – tentatively at first, experimenting with angle and depth. She watches his reactions as she moves, plants her hands on his stomach and feels him tense beneath her palms. Grinds down against his hips and cock and sees him throw back his head, tendons straining in his neck.  

“That’s good,” she says, more to herself than to him. “I like that.” 

He groans her name, sounding rather wanton; she likes that even more. 

He groans again when she leans forward, finding a new angle that better suits them both. She wants more noises from him, to collect his sighs and murmurs and moans, but above all she wants her name again, wants the sound of it on his lips. She’d prepared herself for the possibility that he may need to close his eyes and think of another woman, to pretend that she is his long-dead Wildling lover, kissed by fire, but Jon’s eyes have not left her face since she took him inside her. He looks at her as if they are the only two people in the world. 

“Do you remember that first night after I arrived in Castle Black?” she asks, moving over him. Finding a rhythm. “I hadn’t slept in a bed in weeks, and you insisted that I take yours. Do you remember?” 

Jon pulls at the blankets, his hands curled into fists. White-knuckled with restraint. “I remember,” he says, his voice wrecked. “Sansa, I—”

“I slept in your bed, and it smelled of you. So I closed my eyes and pretended you were there with me. That you lay beside me in the dark.” She leans back again, drawing up the hem of her shift. “I didn’t understand what I felt then, but I do now. I think about it all the time.” She slides her fingers to the place where he’s buried inside her. “Jon, I think about it when I make myself come.”

His hips snap up to meet hers, and they both cry out. “Gods,” he says, “Sansa, I’m so—”

“Don’t be sorry,” she pants. “Do it again.”   

After that he fucks her in short upwards thrusts, jarring and lovely and once nearly strong enough to send her tumbling off him. She takes his hands from the bed and moves them to her hips, letting him hold her in his careful, steadying grip until he goes suddenly still and comes, his mouth working silently around the shape of her name.  

When he’s finished, she eases herself gingerly up and off him. Her thighs are wet, with his spending and her own; she lies back on the bed and concentrates on the slowing exhale and inhale of her breath. _It’s Jon’s seed_ , she tells herself. _Jon’s seed for Jon’s child_. That’s what all this was for – an heir for the North, and for Winterfell.   

Jon stands beside the bed, tugging on his breeches. His back turned to her. When he speaks, his voice is oddly brittle. “Was any of that true, or were you just hoping I’d finish faster if you said it?”

Her eyes sting with tears, from anger or exhaustion; she hides them behind her hand. Voice cool, she says, “If I were inventing some clever lie to entice and arouse you, don’t you think I’d pick something rather less humiliating than _I liked the way your bed smelled_?”

Sansa hears his footsteps by her side of the bed. She looks out from between her fingers and sees him standing there, offering her a damp cloth. “It’s not humiliating,” he says. 

She takes the cloth and rubs it roughly between her legs. He averts his eyes. “It is humiliating,” she says, “given that at the time I thought you were my _brother_ —”

“Half-brother,” he says gently. “And I wasn’t.”

“I should certainly fucking hope not,” she says, her voice growing louder, “since your _come_ is still dripping out of me—”

He bends down and presses his lips to hers. The angle is awkward; the kiss chaste, close-mouthed. Almost shy. For a moment, she touches his cheek and feels the fine bristle of his beard under her palm. Her eyes close. 

Against her mouth Jon says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

Sansa tips her face up to return the pressure of his lips. She hears a soft noise from the back of his throat, a sound like aching, or hunger; she wants to hear it again. 

She ducks her head, putting space between them. Avoiding his gaze. “Thank you for your assistance, Jon. I think I’d like to sleep now.” 

He steps back from the bed. Gathers his boots and jerkin into his arms, and walks to the door. “Goodnight, Your Grace,” he says, and leaves. 

 

++

 

The King in the South and his retinue arrive three days later.

Sansa awaits their approach in the castle courtyard, dressed formally to receive them. Behind her stand the lords and ladies of her court and small council, arranged according to precedence. Behind _them_ are Tormund and Noya, bickering happily – about sealskins? seal _grease_? – with Jon stuck suffering silently between. She’d passed a message through Xhaquo asking him to stand beside her at the front; Jon had politely refused. 

“And it was very wise of him to do so,” Xhaquo had said, almost scolding her. “You are the Queen in the North and the Lady of Winterfell; the Lord Commander knows he is not your equal.” 

“Bran is Jon’s brother as much as he is mine,” Sansa had replied, which had so discomfited the maester that he’d been too flustered to argue the point any further.

It burns her to see Jon standing at the back of the crowd, just as he’d always been forced to do when they were children; he is as much a Stark now as he ever was, and deserves to stand with the family. But she cannot force him to move, not without taking him by the collar and dragging him to the correct place herself. No doubt Tormund could lift him easily, she thinks, if Noya were willing to hold his legs—

Brienne and Podrick are the first to ride through the gates, leading the procession with Bran just behind. Her brother sits tall in his saddle, his fine-boned face fuller now, clean-shaven but so much like their father’s. If seeing his home again for the first time in six years affects him at all, Sansa cannot see it; his expression is as still and impassive as ever. 

And yet his eyes seek her out the moment he enters the courtyard, catching on the bright color of her hair with something almost like eagerness. He nearly frowns when he sees Jon at the back of the company. 

Brienne and Podrick help their king down from the saddle and into his wheeled chair with the ease of long practice. They approach together, Pod pushing the chair, Brienne studying the men of Sansa’s Queensguard with obvious skepticism. Bran holds Sansa’s even gaze, his hands folded neatly in his lap.

“Hello, Sansa,” the King of the Six Kingdoms says in his distant, toneless voice, but his eyes are different somehow – clearer, with a spark of familiar warmth that sends her stumbling forward, etiquette be damned, to throw her arms around her little brother. 

“Welcome home, Bran,” she murmurs against his collar, and his arms come up slowly to wrap around her shoulders. He gives her a hesitant squeeze.

“That’s a nice crown,” he says, and she pulls away, laughing and wiping at her eyes. He looks at the crowd behind her. “Why is Jon standing so far away?”

“Because he’s an idiot.” In a louder voice she says, “We’re honored by your visit, Your Grace. We’ve prepared a feast to celebrate your arrival.” 

“Oh good,” Tyrion says, stepping down out of his carriage. “A feast at Winterfell. Always an auspicious beginning.”  

“You look well, my lord,” Sansa says. His clothes are elegant, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, but his eyes are still the eyes of a prisoner in chains in a burning city. The Hand who loved and betrayed his queen.  

Tyrion lowers his head in a courtly bow. “Thank you, Your Grace. You yourself are ravishingly beautiful as always.”

Sansa had got rather good, over the course of their short marriage, at determining just how drunk her lord husband actually was; in her expert opinion, Tyrion had waited until after midday to take up his wineskin, and so has several hours of semi-sobriety left. Enough time to discuss his proposal, and to press him on the real motive for their visit. 

She’s about to deflect his compliment when Jon appears suddenly at her shoulder. He steps forward and kneels at their brother’s feet. “Your Grace.”

Bran gestures for him to rise. “We’ll sign your pardon tonight, Jon. We leave for the Wall in the morning.”

Sansa frowns, surprised. She’d assumed they’d stay in Winterfell a moon at least. “Bran, you’re leaving _tomorrow_? You’ve only just arrived.”

“You and Jon are coming too,” Bran says, and she sees no warmth in his eyes now. “We must reach Eastwatch-by-the-Sea soon, or we will miss her.” 

Jon and Sansa exchange a baffled glance; it’s the first time they’ve looked at each other in days. “Miss who?” Jon says. 

“Arya,” Bran says. He looks at them each in turn, his face as smooth and unfeeling as marble. “She has something to show us.”

 

 

++ 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for references to sexual assault and several mentions of Tyrion's alcoholism. 
> 
> Also: Jon and Sansa have sex in this chapter in order to get Sansa pregnant, and at one point Sansa panics due to past trauma. Jon asks if she wants to stop, and she decides to keep going despite her initial discomfort. 
> 
> If you'd like to know anything more about the content of this story before you read it, feel free to message me! I'm happy to answer any questions.


	4. The Kingsroad

The first day of the journey north Tyrion requests her company in his carriage.   

She’d much rather ride on horseback in the train with Noya and the others, but the previous evening had been too busy to allow her a moment to speak with Tyrion in private; better, she decides, to have the necessary conversation in a confined carriage on a bumpy road than to put it off another day. 

The Hand’s carriage is actually quite comfortable, despite the sudden jolts and jerks of the rutted Kingsroad. Unshuttered, the carriage windows let in a good deal of air and light, allowing her to watch their traveling companions as they pass on horseback. Tormund and Noya ride close to Brienne, fighting for the knight’s reluctant attention; a moment later Jon goes by with Samwell Tarly and Lord Gendry, seeming rather cheerful until he glances back at the carriage and catches her eye. Whatever he sees in her face, he must not like it; he turns away and urges his horse on to ride ahead. 

The corner of Tyrion’s mouth curls in a wry smile. “Lovers’ spat, Your Grace?” 

He clearly expects her to deny it. Instead she shrugs and says, “Nothing serious. You know how Jon is — some days a missing button is enough to send the man into a foul mood.”

Tyrion’s eyebrows disappear into his hair. “So the rumors are true, then? You and your cousin—”

She allows herself a small smirk. “You seem surprised, my lord. I’ve been told that the tale of the White Wolf and the Winter Queen is well-known even in the South.” 

“If I believed everything I heard in songs—” He stops. Shakes his head and chuckles, low and rueful. “We’re not going to be husband and wife again, are we?”

“No,” she says, some genuine regret in her voice. “We’re not.” 

“Because of Jon Snow?” 

“No,” Sansa says truthfully. “Because of Shae.”

On the other side of the carriage, Tyrion’s face goes bloodless white. 

“I think she could forgive me,” Sansa says, “for being your ally. Maybe even for being your friend. But I can’t marry her killer. I loved her too much for that.” 

His mouth works silently for a moment; when he speaks, his voice is hoarse. “How long have you known?”  

“Years. Littlefinger told me of your trial, and what came after. He wanted me to know that she’d betrayed me. That even someone who loved me would swear an oath before my enemies and call me a murderer.” She gives him a sharp smile. “It was one of his most important lessons.”

Tyrion stares at her with wide eyes. “You never said.”

“Why would I? You were my best connection to Daenerys’ inner circle; I wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize that.” She looks out the window, at the rolling hills to the east. The darkness of the wolfswood to the north. “After your proposal, I tried telling myself that it didn’t matter. You’re not a cruel man, despite what you’ve done. And I don’t think there’s anyone I love without blood on their hands.” 

“If the rumors are true, Your Grace, your own hands aren’t exactly clean.” 

She turns back to him, arching an eyebrow. “Do you want to compare our situations, my lord? My sadistic rapist husband, against your scorned lover?” 

He shakes his head, his lips pressed together in a thin line.

“I thought not.” She returns her gaze to the window. “You’ve always been kind to me, even when it went against your best interest to do so. I’ll never forget that, but I won’t marry you for it either.” She deliberately softens her voice, letting him see the calculated change in her expression — the transformation from wolf to queen. “So while I’m flattered by your very generous offer, Lord Tyrion, I’m afraid I cannot accept. I hope we can continue to be friends in the future.”     

Tyrion rubs a hand roughly over his face. “Oh, certainly,” he says. “Certainly. Friends about to share a drink, perhaps?”

It won’t be midday for hours yet; he must expect her to refuse. “I could do with some wine,” she says, “if you have anything decent.” 

His laugh sounds a little pained, but she knows him too well — a few cups will drown out the unhappy past, turning pain to wit and drollery. He takes a full wineskin from a basket at his feet and removes the cork with his teeth. He raises it in a toast. “To our friendship, Your Grace. May it be a long one.” 

He takes a long swig and passes her the skin. She raises it to him. “To friendship,” she says, and drinks. 

  
  


++

  
  


Brienne finds her when they make camp for the night.   

Noya is helping Sansa unpack their trunks in the queen’s tent. They’d prepared for the journey in such a rush that everything is jumbled together — summer clothes fit for traveling, winter furs for when they reach the Wall. Papers and cosmetics and quills. Somehow Noya’s extra knives ended up in a box with Sansa’s sewing things, leaving them both with a great deal to untangle. They work together in peevish silence, irritable from the long day’s travel and each blaming the other for the mess; they look up with relief when Brienne pulls aside the tent flap. 

“Your Grace, I hope I’m not intruding—”

Sansa beckons her inside. “Please come in. We’re much less likely to stab each other if we have a witness.” 

Brienne shoots Noya a wary, uncertain look; Noya responds with a grin. “Lord Commander Tarth. It’s good to see you again without the dust of the road between us.”

“It _was_ a long day’s ride,” Brienne says grudgingly, the stiffness in her shoulders relaxing a bit. The two women are almost of a height, though Noya is all angles and points — narrow and wiry where Brienne is muscular and broad, dark where Brienne is fair.  

The wildling looks Brienne up and down with a casual, appreciative eye. “I hardly minded the ride, myself. It gave me ample opportunity to admire your seat.” 

Brienne flushes bright pink. “My—”

“On your horse, ser. You ride very well, for a kneeler.” Noya glances at Sansa over her shoulder, pale eyes laughing. “I think I’ll go find that missing trunk. If you’ll excuse me, Your Grace?”

“Oh, go away. I’ll finish faster without you.” Sansa drags another clump of embroidery thread into her lap and begins to untangle it. Noya winks at Brienne and ducks out of the tent. 

Brienne watches her go, looking a little stunned. They’d fought together during the Great War, Sansa knows, though at the time Brienne had eyes for no one but the Kingslayer. Sansa has no idea if her sworn sword even enjoys the company of women as Noya does; her friend claims to have a sense for these things, but she’s hardly infallible.

Sansa unwinds half a skein of thread from the hilt of one of Noya’s daggers. “She’ll spend the whole journey trying to seduce you, if you don’t tell her no.” Brienne blanches, and Sansa adds, “I can ask her to stop. She’s persistent, but she won’t be offended by rejection. The free folk rarely are.”

Brienne struggles for a moment, cheeks pink again. “I — uh. No. _No_. Please don’t trouble yourself, Your Grace. It — it doesn’t bother me.”

Perhaps Noya’s sense was right after all. Sansa smiles. “I’m glad. Noya’s a deeply irritating person, but she was my only friend for a long time. I don’t know what I would have done without her.” 

Brienne looks down at her feet, her face suddenly twisted with guilt. “I shouldn’t have let you return north alone. I abandoned you, and my oath to your mother.” 

Sansa had all but begged her to stay behind in the capital and lead Bran’s Kingsguard, but Brienne had insisted that her place was in the North; only a quiet word from Arya had convinced the knight in the end. Sansa sets her tangle of thread aside and stands, reaching out to take Brienne’s sword-calloused hand. 

“You have _never_ abandoned me,” she says fiercely, pressing the other woman’s palm. “Not once. Nearly everyone else has, but you would never.”

Brienne’s voice cracks a little. “But you were alone.”

“Everyone’s alone sometimes. I’ve survived it before, and so have you.” Sansa releases her hand. “Come and sit with me, Brienne. I have hours of tedious work ahead, and I’d like your company.”

After some prompting, Brienne tells her of the time they’d spent apart — of the formation of the Kingsguard, the slow rebuilding of the capital, and the early years when tensions with Dorne and the Iron Islands were at their worst. Sansa has heard these stories already, in ravens from Bran and Tyrion and her other connections in the South, but she values Brienne’s practical, even-handed perspective. She’s glad Bran has her voice on his small council, as well as her sword guarding his back. 

“Your Grace,” Brienne says hesitantly, during a brief lull in the conversation, “I’ve heard some troubling gossip since I came north.” 

 _Ah_ , Sansa thinks. _Here it is._ “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have much interest in gossip, ser.”

Brienne shifts uneasily in her chair. “I know Jon Snow is very dear to you. And that you are very dear to him. I’ve seen it in you both, from the beginning.” She holds Sansa’s gaze, her jaw tight. “But now people say that you are lovers. That he’s to be the father of your heir.” 

Sansa gives her an arch look. “You’d rather I marry Tyrion Lannister?” 

“Of course not,” Brienne says, scoffing at the very idea. “I shouldn’t think you’d want to marry anyone. You’re the queen.” 

“And a queen needs an heir.” 

“There are other ways to get one. Adopt a foundling, Your Grace, or choose a child of another Northern house. I know your cousin would never intentionally hurt you, but please don’t force yourself to endure intimacies that—” 

Some emotion must slip through Sansa’s careful mask, because Brienne suddenly stops mid-sentence. 

“Oh,” she says, her blue eyes wide. “You—”

“Yes,” Sansa says through her teeth. Begging Brienne with her eyes to spare her the humiliation of hearing it said aloud. “I do.” 

“Well. That’s different, then.” There’s a short pause. “Does _he_ know that you—”

“Definitely not.”

“ _Oh_.” Brienne thinks about this for a moment, then frowns. “That must be very awkward.” 

“Sansa?” Jon’s voice from outside the tent; Sansa startles a little at the sound. “Can I come in?”

Brienne stands. “I’ll leave you, Your Grace. Unless you’d rather I stayed?” 

The offer is sincere, but Brienne looks almost amused as she makes it. Sansa shakes her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow on the road, Lord Commander Tarth. Have a pleasant evening.” 

“I hope you do the same, Your Grace.” An undeniable smirk, just as she lifts the tent flap and reveals Jon standing there waiting. “Lord Commander.”

Jon nods a greeting. “Lord Commander.”

Brienne glances back at Sansa, gives her an entirely unsubtle look, and walks out into the fading light of the late summer evening. Jon hovers just outside the tent, apparently unsure of his welcome. 

Sansa sighs. “Come inside, Jon. We have things to talk about.”  

 

++  

 

When a page comes in thirty minutes later to light the lanterns, they’re still speculating on Bran’s mysterious pronouncement of the day before. 

“How could Arya possibly have made it to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea?” Sansa asks, pacing the length of the tent. “She sailed due west six years ago, and no one has heard from her since.”

Jon sits back in his chair, scratching his fingers through the beard on his chin. He’s rather in need of a trim. “I’ve no idea. Maybe what’s west of Westeros is — well, _Essos_. Maybe she just went in an enormous circle and wound up back home.”

“If that’s the case, she must be furious.” The page ducks out of the tent. Sansa sits down in a huff. “Bran really wouldn’t tell you anything else? You rode with him for most of the day.”

“He said he’s told us all he knows — that Arya will reach the ruins of Eastwatch soon, and that the three of us must be there to meet her.” Then he adds, much too casually: “Did Tyrion have anything to say about it?”

“Tyrion spent two hours rambling about the Iron Bank and the climbing price of lumber, then rolled his empty wineskin into a pillow and fell asleep.” She tugs the leather tie from her hair and begins to unravel her braid. “In his defense, he was trapped in a coach with the woman who’d just rejected his proposal of marriage. Not a situation in which many men would be at their best.”

Jon goes very still. “You refused him.”

“Of course I did. I told you I would.” She stops, her fingers tangled in her hair. “You thought I’d changed my mind?”

“We haven’t—” He clears his throat, sounding almost nervous. “You haven’t asked for me since that night.”

She feels caught, unable to explain. A heat suffuses her chest, like embarrassment or desire. “Well,” she says, “I’m asking now.”    

Jon wets his lips. He gives the canvas walls of the tent a pointed look. “You’ll have to be quieter than last time, unless you want the whole camp to hear.” 

“ _I_ was not the one who—” she begins too loudly, before she notices his small grin. She glares down her nose at him. “I suppose you’ll have to kiss me, then, and keep me quiet. I wouldn’t want to be _indiscreet_.”

His grin disappears. The expression left in its place is intent, almost starved. His attention focused wholly on her face. “Can I kiss you now?”

“If you like,” she says faintly, surprised at his eagerness. Then he’s standing, covering the distance between their chairs in two long strides and cupping the nape of her neck with one hand. She has time only to say his name before his lips meet hers.

This kiss is as gentle as their first, close-mouthed and slow. His thumb sweeps the sensitive skin behind her ear. She arches towards him, her hand fumbling for purchase on his arm or wrist, but just as she leans up into the kiss he draws back, pulling away until their lips barely touch. 

“You’re teasing me,” she says, breathless, and feels him smile. 

“If you like,” he says, and kisses her again. 

He does it over and over again, kissing her sweetly and then retreating, coaxing her to follow. He draws her up out of her chair, his free hand at the small of her back, his lips a lure at the corner of her mouth, but once she is standing she has the advantage of height, slight though it may be — she slides her fingers over his jaw and kisses him for true, his mouth opening under hers.

She kisses by instinct, inexpert, impatient — guided only by the need to be close, and then to be closer still. Her fingers fist in his hair, and he groans so loudly she feels the vibration of it in her own throat. “Shh,” she says, petting the soft skin at the nape of his neck. “The whole camp will hear.”

He melts against her, hands clutching her waist. “ _Sansa_.”

“Perhaps we should dowse the lights,” she says, her voice low, lips pressed to his ear. “I’m sure our silhouettes show against the canvas. Anyone could see.”

He abruptly steps back, frowning at the tent’s walls. “You think so?” 

She drops her arms, a little put out. “No, not really. It’s just — you seemed to like the idea of being overheard, so I thought I’d experiment.” 

His eyes narrow. “Experiment?” 

“You liked it when I spoke to you, last time. It seemed to help.” Thunderclouds are gathering on his already gloomy brow, so she adds: “I wasn’t _lying_ , exactly. We probably should dowse a few of the lanterns, just in case.” 

He does so, watching her warily as he moves around the tent. “It wasn’t _what_ you said, Sansa. Not this time. It was how you sounded when you said it.” 

Her eyes follow him. “You like my voice.” 

Jon snuffs out the last lantern, leaving only candlelight. She almost misses the wry quirk of his mouth. “Aye,” he says. “I do.”

Sansa loosens the ties of her simple travelling dress. “What else?” she asks, emboldened by the dark.     

He walks closer. “What else?” 

“You like my voice after I’ve been kissing you. What else do you like about me?” Her dress slips from her shoulders, revealing the plain corset and shift beneath. 

It _is_ desire she sees in his eyes now, she’s sure of it — not a trick of the candlelight, nor of her own wanting. He rests a hand lightly at her waist. “Sansa—”

“Did you like being inside of me?” She presses close, feeling him shiver. “It seemed as though you did, but you never said. You hardly spoke a word the whole time. But _gods_ , Jon, the way you _looked_ at me—”

He kisses her hard, one hand at her waist, the other cradling her jaw. She’s overwhelmed by the greedy heat of his mouth, his teeth sharp against her lip, and she fights to match him — to hold him closer, kiss harder, to devour each breath and soft, longing sound. It’s only when he wrenches himself away that she realizes she’s shaking, clutching at his shoulders and back.

She hates the crease of worry between his eyebrows, hates the fear for her she hears in his voice when he says, “Sansa, are you—”

She holds his face between her hands. “Say that you want me.” 

Jon gapes at her, stunned. “I want you,” he breathes. “Of course, _of course_ I want you, are you _mad—_ ”

Sansa tries to kiss him and unhook her corset at the same time, accidentally jabbing him in the stomach in the process; he tries to help and pokes himself in the eye with her nose. She’s laughing by the time the corset falls free, giggling as she draws her shift over her head and drops it to the ground. “Does this part,” she says between kisses, “ever get — less stupid?”

Jon appears to have been struck speechless by the sight of her bare breasts, so she bends down to strip off her smallclothes rather than wait for his answer. 

Sansa has been called beautiful all her life, and it has brought her little but pain. Once she learned to recognize lust in a man’s eyes it only ever made her feel like a _thing_ , an object to be sold or stolen or destroyed; she never imagined a man would look at her scarred, naked body and drop to his knees like a penitent at prayer. 

“Jon—”

“Did you bring the oil?” he asks, kneeling at her feet, close enough that she can feel the speed of his breath against her bare skin. Tentative fingers brush her thigh, and she shivers. 

“I packed it, but I’ve no idea where it is.” She touches the crown of his head, running her fingers through his hair. “Jon, I’m not sure - I don’t know that we’ll _need—_ ”

He presses a kiss hot against her hip, smothering a groan against her skin. Her grip tightens in his hair, and he looks up at her, his pupils blown wide. Throat working as he swallows. “I could use my mouth,” he says. “If you’ll let me. If you want.”   

Her breath stutters. “Your mouth—”

“I would kiss your cunt as I kissed your lips,” Jon tells her, his eyes dark and luminous. “Kiss you until you came on my tongue, until my face was _soaked_ with you—”

She can’t stop herself; her left hand moves of its own volition to slide between her legs, cupping herself there, desperate for any kind of pressure or touch. “ _Yes_ ,” she gasps when he covers her fingers with his own, pressing harder. She grinds into their hands. “I want that. I want your mouth on me _,_ Jon _, please—_ ”     

They stumble over to the low bed set up in the corner of the tent, Jon guiding her by the hips until she’s flat on her back amongst blankets and furs, spreading her legs to make room for him between them. His hand kneads at her mound and outer lips, molding her to the firm press of his palm; she rocks into the touch with a cry loud enough to be heard at the Wall. 

Jon grins, brushing his lips against the inside of her knee. His beard tickles her skin. “What did we say, Your Grace, about the need to keep quiet?”

Sansa reaches out and traces the shape of his mouth with her thumb. “That you should kiss me,” she says, and draws him down to the slick parting of her lips. 

It is not like being touched with fingers, nor like being filled with his cock — his tongue sweeps every inch of her, teasing her nub and her entrance before he seeks elsewhere, holding her open with his thumbs to lave the length and breadth of her cunt. He is too soft at first, always too gentle, but with the subtle encouragement of her hand fisted in his hair he drags his mouth hard over the center of her, lips and tongue and hot, panting breath. At the first touch of his teeth she claps her hand over her mouth to smother a wail.

She comes the first time with his tongue deep within her and the bridge of his nose against her nub; the second with fingers hooked suddenly inside and _up_ as she’s still quivering from the first. 

He works her through it with fingers and tongue, gentle again, soothing and petting her, stroking her belly and the wet curling hair between her legs. She feels liquid, molten, at once weightless and sunk deep into the surface of the bed; he’s coaxing her impossibly towards a third crisis when she realizes he won’t stop until she tells him to. He would sup at her all night if she let him. 

“Jon,” she says, and his mouth leaves her at once. He tips his head against her thigh, breathing hard. He looks dazed, almost drunk; his face is wet, and red from exertion. She reaches out and brushes the hair from his eyes. “You’re so good at that.” 

She feels foolish the moment the words leave her mouth, but Jon turns his face away and _shudders,_ his hips bucking against the bed. She catches him by the chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. 

“You’re so good _to_ _me_ ,” she tries, and he trembles violently in her grip, his eyes hot as candle flame. “Have you thought about this before? About burying your face in my cunt and eating your fill?” 

“Aye,” he says, the confession raw, unrestrained. “All the time.”

 _All the time_ , she thinks, and feels her heart kick in her chest. “I see,” she says, her voice dangerously uneven. She smears her thumb over the wetness in his beard. “You must have had expectations. How do I taste?” 

A breath later he is crawling up her body, his clothes rough against her bare skin, his mouth blindly seeking hers. She tastes the salt of herself on his lips, on his tongue as she opens to him and drowns in the kiss. He’s so heavy over her, a delicious weight across her chest and stomach. He would free her in a heart’s beat if she asked; instead she wraps her legs around his waist and pins him in place, holding him in the cradle of her hips. 

He rocks against her, hard in his breeches, grinding into her where she’s wet and open. The friction makes her whimper into his mouth. “I want you like this,” she says, desperate, light-headed, reaching down between them to fumble with the placket of his breeches. “Please, I need—”

Jon sits back and rips his laces open, taking himself out. “Like this?” he says, covering her again, fixing the head at her entrance with one hand. The question is in his eyes, as well — the silent offer to stop, or slow down. To give her whatever she asks. 

Sansa brushes her lips against his. “Yes,” she says, “ _like this_ ,” and melts into the steady smooth push of his cock inside her. 

He’s so close and so still, holding himself rigid above her, searching her face for any sign of pain or panic. She feels wonderfully full, stretched and surrounded and enclosed; she runs her palms along the tense plane of his back and gives him a giddy smile.        

“You’re perfect,” she says, and despite his iron control she feels his hips twitch. She tightens around him and he groans, his eyes falling shut. “Can you feel that? Can you feel how you fit inside me?”  

“ _Gods_ ,” he says, and kisses the corner of her mouth. He withdraws and pushes in again slowly, with so much restraint it makes her want to grab a fistful of his hair and _pull_. “Sansa, if you’re trying to hurry me—”

Another slow thrust, so careful and deliberate her toes curl against the blankets. She rakes her fingernails across his clothed shoulders, writhing beneath him. “I don’t want you to hurry,” she says, panting; “I only want you to stop teasing and _fuck me_.”

“I am fucking you,” he says against her lips, his voice far too even. He pulls back and eases into her in another excruciatingly slow push. “If you want something more, you need to ask for it.”

Sansa locks her legs around his waist, a greedy whine caught high in the back of her throat as he rocks into her in slow, tidal movements of his hips. She knows what to say to provoke him into giving her more — _you feel so good inside me, you take such good care of me, you’re the only one I trust_ — but it seems impossible, suddenly, to ask for it outright. _Harder_ and _faster_ aren’t enough, not for what she really wants; she cannot find the words.

His face is flushed, his eyes distant and unfocused; they only fix on hers when she lifts one hand to cradle his cheek. “I was sleeping in a tent like this one,” she says, “the first time I touched myself and thought of you.” 

Jon’s hips stutter, his shoulders tensing. His mouth twists in something like pain. “ _Sansa._ ”

“It was the first time I’d ever made myself come. I tried to be quiet; your tent was always so close to mine. Just a few feet away, and I was terrified you’d hear when I pressed my fingers inside, when I said your name—”

He kisses her fiercely, deep and hungry and hard enough to bruise. She clenches tight around him and he ends the kiss with a groan, pressing their foreheads together. 

“You have to ask, Sansa,” he says, his voice hoarse, an agonized, unfamiliar rasp. “I can’t give you what you want unless you—” 

“I want _you_ ,” she says, furious, her fingernails sharp against his scalp. “I’m asking, I’m—”

Jon withdraws and slides back into her in a slow, relentless thrust that ripples along her spine, arching her against him. He says her name, ragged, desperate, and then pulls out of her completely, standing just long enough to rip his jerkin and shirt off over his head, to shove his breeches down his legs. Then he’s on the bed again, sinking into her, filling her, skin to naked skin and pressing fevered kisses to her breasts, to her throat and jaw and mouth. She cries out, and he makes no attempt to quiet her. 

He fucks her with liquid, merciless rolls of his hips, restraint gone, and in its place is his _voice_ , the terrible, heartstopping things he murmurs against her lips as he grips her thighs, pushing her legs towards her chest to move deeper inside her. 

“Being so good for me,” he says, and the words are like wildfire under her skin, her own weapon turned against her. “So good, Sansa. Gods, so _wet_. Going to put my mouth on you after I come, taste you again—”

She clutches at his back, his shoulders, his name a sob in her throat. “Jon—”

“Wish I’d heard you, that night in your tent.” His voice burns her, his eyes bright in the candlelit dark. “Gods, Sansa, I wish I’d _known—_ ”

She kisses him, slips one hand down between their bodies and rubs her fingers over the slick, stretched skin around her entrance. Finds her nub and begins to work herself to the rolling rhythm of his thrusts.  

Her name leaves him in a shocked, punched out breath, and soon she hears herself begging, babbling nonsense. Pleading with him to let her come, to be inside her when she does. 

“Tell me,” she hears herself say, her voice strangled and high, his beloved face swimming above her. “Tell me, please. I’m _asking_ , Jon, I’m—”

He pushes deep inside her, and she comes.

He’s still fucking her through it when he moans into her mouth and spills. She shudders around him again at the feel of it, her body echoing with pleasure and the sudden release of tension, hers and his. She draws her hands soothingly up and down his sweat-slick back, briefly dipping down to squeeze his arse. He twitches inside her, and she laughs.

Jon frowns down at her. “You think that’s funny?”

“Oh yes, my lord.” She flutters her eyelashes. “Almost as funny as your face.” 

“Right. That’s it.” He drops a kiss on the point of her chin, then slides down her body until his face is level with her cunt. She tries to close her legs on him, still giggling when he seals his mouth over her nub and _sucks_. 

When she rejoins the world of the living he’s lying between her thighs, gently pushing his come back inside her with his fingers. 

“I hate to tell you this, Your Grace, but a few people may have heard that.” 

Her skin is buzzing like a wasp’s nest. She reaches down and seizes his hand, his fingers slipping wetly under hers. “Jon, if you keep doing that I’m going to come again, and if I come again I’m probably going to die.”        

He kisses her wrist. “You could take one more,” he says, but moves away to sit at the end of the bed. As she watches he shakes out his rumpled breeches and begins to put them on. 

 _Don’t go_ , she wants to say, _sleep here tonight_ , but the bed is too narrow for them to lie comfortably side by side. And it is one thing to want her, and quite another to sleep all night in her arms. 

He pulls his jerkin over his head. She opens her mouth to thank him as she did the first time, but he stops her with a kiss. “Until tomorrow night,” he says, and slips out of her tent and into the dark. 

 

++

        

“I have to admit,” Noya says the next morning as they mount their horses, “I didn’t think Lord Snow had it in him.”

“Oh gods.” Sansa grips the reins, barely resisting the temptation to hide her face in her hands. “Why, _why_ can’t you just be like everyone else and pretend you didn’t—”

“Wolf queen!” Tormund shouts from the other side of the camp, his hands cupped around his mouth. “I’m very proud of you!” 

Sansa gives him a weak wave. “Noya, I need you to kill me. Immediately, please.”

Noya shakes her head. “Can’t. Might hurt my chances with the lady knight.” Together they guide their horses out of the camp and towards the Kingsroad, joining the train of riders, wagons, and carriages. Noya leans back easily in her saddle, reins in hand. “Last time you two fucked you couldn’t look each other in the eye for days.”

“Which you found hilarious.”

“Which I found absolutely hilarious, but in between my spasms of delight I did wonder if you might, despite all your protests to the contrary, wind up marrying the little Lannister after all.” She looks over and meets Sansa’s eyes, squinting slightly in the early morning sun. “You never told me what went wrong that night.” 

“Nothing serious,” Sansa says blithely. “We’ve worked it out now.” 

“Oh. _Have_ you.” Noya looks away, shaking her head. “Years ago, when my clan sent me south to treat with the Northern queen, I asked Jon Snow what kind of woman you were. Do you know what he said?”     

Sansa laughs, the sound unexpectedly bitter. “That I was clever and untrustworthy?” 

“He told me,” Noya says, “that you were the bravest person he’d ever met. That you were merciful and just — and clever, and cunning. The queen the North deserves.” She grins. “I told him he sounded like a lovesick idiot.”

She sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth. “Noya—”   

Noya leans half out of her saddle and gives Sansa a brief, smacking kiss on the forehead. Their horses dance away from each other, startled. “I see Ser Brienne ahead; I’m off to plead my case. How’s my hair?”

Sansa blinks at her. “Same as always. Like a bird’s nest with braids in it.” 

“Perfect,” she says, and kicks her heels into her horse’s side, trotting up the line to where Brienne and Pod ride at the head of the train. Brienne blushes at the sight of her. 

The sun climbs high as the hours pass, the sky a fierce summer blue. Sansa rides in silence, surrounded by her Queensguard, but the rest of the train is lively with talk and laughter. She can hear Tormund at the rear, telling one of his ridiculous stories and answering in horrifying detail every question Gendry puts to him; when she looks back, she sees Jon and Samwell Tarly riding close, their heads bent together as they speak. Sam catches her looking and turns red as a beet. 

“Shit,” Sansa says, very softly under her breath, and longs for the wine-soaked privacy of Tyrion’s carriage.  

When the train breaks for a short rest at midday, she hands her horse off to a groom and flees the bustle of the crowd. She finds a shady spot beneath a drooping, low-limbed willow tree, out of the sun and out of sight of the road. 

“I’ll rest here,” she tells Ser Gerold, the only man of her Guard who follows. “I need a moment away from the dust.” 

“Of course, Your Grace,” Ser Gerold says, and moves to stand at an inconspicuous distance.  

Sansa sits at the base of the willow tree, leaning back against its bark. She regrets now that she’d insisted Xhaquo stay behind to oversee the castle; the maester never hesitates to say exactly what he means, no matter how unpleasant. Noya, for all her bluntness, cares too much for Sansa’s feelings — Xhaquo would ensure she did not forget the reality of her situation. 

Jon shares her bed out of duty, in order to produce a child. She should be relieved that they both find pleasure in the act, and that these strange intimacies have not ruined their fragile friendship. It would be foolish to dwell too long on the rasp of his voice as he moved inside her, or on the sight of his flushed face, wet between her—

“Lord Commander Snow.” Tyrion’s voice from behind her, alarmingly close. Sansa freezes in place, her breath caught in her throat. 

“Lord Tyrion,” Jon says, sounding stiff and distracted. She hears his footsteps as he walks closer. “Have you seen the queen?”  

“Not today,” Tyrion says lightly. “She had more than enough of my company on yesterday’s ride, I’m afraid.” Sansa peeks around the willow’s trunk and sees them standing nearby, on the far side of a thick curtain of leaves. “I’m sure she’s around here somewhere,” Tyrion says. “Though I haven’t seen you much together of late — at least, not during the daylight hours.” 

Jon sighs, looking down at his feet. “Tyrion—”

“The separation must be difficult to bear.” 

“Are we really going to do this?” Jon asks, incredulous. “After all that we’ve—” He stops himself and moves closer still, lowering his voice. “You and I are not rivals, Tyrion. This isn’t some tragic ballad or bawdy song. If Sansa’s chosen me, it’s because she thinks it’s what’s best for the North. To her, that’s all that matters.”

“That’s not how it sounded last night.” 

Jon’s posture changes, the tension in his shoulders a sudden, unsubtle threat. “You’re treading very close to the line, Lannister.” 

“Oh, _the line_. How dreadful. I’m all aquiver.” She cannot see Tyrion’s face through the leaves, but she can imagine his expression. If he isn’t rolling his eyes, it’s through sheer force of will. “You aren’t the only one who cares for Sansa’s well-being. She used to be my wife.” 

Jon scoffs. “She was a child when you were wed. You were her jailor, not her husband.”

“And you were her brother.”  

Silence. She watches Jon’s unmoving silhouette, dark against the willow’s filmy leaves. Her fingernails dig into her palms.

“Aye,” Jon says finally. “I was. I’ve never forgotten it.”  

Something in his expression must unsettle Tyrion; he takes a small step backwards. “How long have you—” He chokes off the words. “Jon, tell me you weren’t, not while Dany—”

“No. Not until a few days ago.” Jon turns and looks away, towards the bustling caravan on the Kingsroad. “She needs an heir, Tyrion. That’s all this is.”

“Right, of course. Because you’re the only man north of the Neck with a working cock.” Jon makes a low, angry noise, but Tyrion speaks over him: “If you recall, I do have some considerable experience with this kind of _unconventional attachment_. It rarely ends well for either party.” 

Sansa stands and says, “Your concern is appreciated, my lord, but unnecessary.”  

Both men stare in horror as she draws the curtain of leaves aside and steps out into the sunlight. Jon looks as if he’s about to be ill. “Sansa—”

“Apologies, my lords. I couldn’t help but overhear.” She turns to Tyrion, her expression as smooth and cold as ice. “You think Jon manipulates me, as your sister did Ser Jaime?” 

Tyrion shakes his head, lips pursed. “No, Your Grace. Of course not.”

“I see. So I must be Cersei, then, using my weaponous cunt to seduce my poor, defenseless brother.” She gives Tyrion a razor-thin smile. “I did spend a great deal of time with your family at an impressionable age. You aren’t the first to wonder whether I’d inherited any of the Lannister perversions.” 

She’s hit her mark; Tyrion’s eyes narrow. “Jon’s the Targaryan. If you wish to speak of inheritances—”

“Jon is a Stark. His children will be Starks, and their children after them.” She takes Jon’s hand, interlacing their fingers together. He stares at her, shocked. His palm is damp with sweat. “I’m sure your king is in need of your counsel, Lord Tyrion. Jon has enough of it for one day.”

Tyrion lowers his head in a small bow, though it looks less like obeisance from a lord to a monarch than a gentlemanly concession of defeat. “Your Grace,” he says, and gives Jon a final, inscrutable glance before walking off towards the road. 

Sansa watches him go. “We should return to the train,” she says, her voice as empty as she feels. “I’m sure we’ll be leaving soon.”  

Jon says nothing, instead drawing her by the hand through the green curtain of the willow’s leaves, into the dim shelter of its branches. She stumbles, half-blind in the sudden dark; Jon steadies her, his face in shadow.  

“ _Sansa_ ,” he says, sounding almost helpless, and kisses her.

He kisses like a man starving, like he has not supped in days and his only sustenance can be found in the sharp, shocked inhale of her breath, in the parting of her lips and the heat of her mouth. His hands find her waist, her arse, the swell of her breast; his fingers follow the curve of her skull as he presses her against the tree, bark rough against her back, their bodies sweetly aligned. She drags him closer, demanding more with the pull of her mouth and roll of her hips; he gasps into her, wordless, pleading.  

“Is this why you were looking for me?” she asks, dazed and grinning, her arms looped around his neck. In a broad parody of his Northern growl she says, “Och, Lord Tyrion, have yeh seen the queen? I’ve come to fook her up against a tree.” 

Jon frowns, his mouth red with kissing. His eyes are heavy-lidded and dark. “I don’t sound like that. And I’m not going to fuck you against a tree.” 

“Mah name’s Jon Snow. Ah’m too craven to fook a lady against a tree, even if she asks meh.”

He shakes his head, almost laughing. “Gods help me,” he says, and catches her mouth in another deep, drugging kiss. She arches against him, hooking one leg around his; he pulls away, breathing hard. “Sansa, what Tyrion said—”

“Tyrion’s still grieving his family. He’s seeing ghosts.” She reaches up to pet his ridiculous hair. They really should get back to the train before they’re missed. “Sure you won’t have me up against the tree?” she teases.  

He presses a kiss to her temple, feather-light. “If it’s any consolation,” he says, “I’ll spend the rest of the day thinking about it.” 

“Acceptable.” She slips out from between him and the willow’s trunk. “Why _were_ you looking for me? I mean, if you weren’t planning to—”

“I thought we might ride together, once we were back on the road.” 

Absurdly, she blushes. “Oh. Yes. That would be fine.” She smoothes her hair with nervous fingers. “It’s a little odd, everyone knowing. After what they heard last night, there’s bound to be talk.”

He gives her a strange look. “I thought you wanted everyone to know. To announce it without needing to actually—”

“I did. I do. It’s the best strategy.” She straightens the twisted fabric of her bodice. “It’s just — we’ll reach the Wall in a week. Maybe less, at the pace Bran is keeping. And I hadn’t really considered what Arya would say, when she learned that you and I—”

Tyrion had called it an _unconventional attachment_. Their sister would not be so polite.

Jon reaches out and takes her hand. He interlaces their fingers, his expression grim. “No point worrying about that now,” he says, and walks with her to the Kingsroad.   

  
  


++

  
  


After Jon leaves her bed that night, she dreams of King’s Landing. 

Not the city of ashes left in the Dragon Queen’s wake, but the poison jewel she’d known when Joffrey was king. She dreams she walks alone through the empty corridors of the Red Keep, through the gardens lush and perfumed and silent. The gravel path crunches beneath her feet.  

“There you are,” says Margarey Tyrell, appearing from nowhere to take her arm. “I thought we’d lost you, sweet girl.”

She is as beautiful as Sansa remembers her — _exactly_ as Sansa remembers her, in her ivory and rose-thorn wedding dress and delicately antlered Baratheon crown. “I’m sorry, Your Grace,” Sansa says, dipping into a curtsy. Her dead friend’s hand is soft at her elbow. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.” 

Margarey gives her an impish smile and links their arms together. “Let’s put such tired formalities behind us, shall we? After all, we are both queens now.” 

They walk together down the garden path, through dappled patches of sunlight and shade. Margarey tells her an amusing story about people she has never met, about summer in Highgarden and the innocent follies of youth; Sansa barely listens. They have met no one on the path. The only footsteps are their own.   

“Don’t you think it strange,” Margarey says, “that in my short life I married three kings, and three times was denied my chance to rule? And yet here you are, wife of a despised second son and widow of a villainous bastard — now a queen with a crown of wolves circling your pretty head.” Her laugh is genuine and light, like the ringing of bells. “I can hardly imagine the sweet girl I knew playing the game so well.” 

Sansa bites her tongue. “I inherited the throne, Your Grace. My brother was King in the North.”

“Your brother was a green boy,” Margarey says, not unkindly. “But the Starks were kings and queens of old.” They turn a corner and find themselves in the Great Hall, standing before the Iron Throne. 

“I don’t want to be here,” Sansa says, her voice girlish and small; the words echo through the hollow chamber, shaming her. She takes a step back, pulling on their linked arms. “Margarey, I—”

“There’s naught to be afraid of,” Margarey says, sweet and soothing. Holding her in place. “Nothing here can harm you now.” 

Sunlight streams in through the tall, narrow windows, but the dais at the end of the Hall is murky, draped in shadow. Margarey leads her towards it. 

“Ugly old thing,” she says, wrinkling her nose at the throne. Its jagged shape looms before them in the dark. “I shudder to think how much blood has been spilled for its sake.”

“It’s gone now,” Sansa says, comforting herself with the memory. “Melted down to nothing. No one will ever sit on it again.”

Margarey’s sweet expression turns coy. “Is that so?” She releases Sansa’s arm and climbs the dais, her thorn-stitched skirts swirling about her legs. Before Sansa can stop her, she reaches out and touches the iron hilt of a sword. She arches a lovely eyebrow. “Feels solid enough to me.” 

Sansa shivers. “Please, you shouldn’t—”

“Why not? I am the queen.” She sits, heedless of her delicate gown and the deadly-sharp blades around her. She sets her elbows on the wide armrests, crossing her legs neatly at the knee. “How funny. This would have been your dear cousin’s throne, if he’d wished it.” 

Sansa hears a soft scraping sound from the shadows. Movement in the darkness beyond. She looks away, shaking her head. “Jon never wanted power. He doesn’t — he’s not like that.”

“Not like you, you mean.” 

Sansa raises her chin, her spine straight as steel. “I’m not ashamed of the things I’ve done to protect my family and my home. To protect _myself_ , when no one else could.”

Margaery smiles down at her like a stranger. “And now you’ve a crown, and your kingdom thrives. So tell me, winter’s queen — what do you want that you do not have?” 

Sansa swallows a sudden, sour taste at the back of her mouth. “An heir, Your Grace.”

“I asked what you want, not what you need.” The Queen runs her thumb idly over the edge of a blade, drawing a thin line of blood. “You do not _want_ a child any more than you _want_ a husband. But an heir brings stability. Longevity.” She rubs the blood between her fingers, watching fascinated as it smears. “Legacy.” 

Another sound from the shadows, like something heavy dragged across stone. 

The Queen wipes the blood on the bodice of her gown. The stain spreads scarlet across the ivory. “You think that if Jon Snow gives you a child, you will be allowed to keep him with you, away from the Wall. You would have him trade one prison for another.” 

“It was Jon’s idea. He offered to father my heir.”  

“But you must have wondered why.” She pauses delicately, a mocking glint in her eyes. “Or were you too afraid, my lady, to look the truth in the face?” 

Snowflakes begin to drift from the ruined ceiling; Sansa feels them settle on her skin, warm as ash. “And what is the truth, Your Grace?” 

The Queen rises and descends from the dais in slow, measured steps. She leaves no footprints in the snow. “You were his least favorite sister, then his most beautiful, most conniving cousin. Now he is your lover, your White Wolf howling for his Winter Queen.” She cups Sansa’s face with a single cold hand. “But life is not a song, Sansa Stark. He does not love you.”   

Sansa takes a soft, shuddering breath. “I know,” she says. 

“So I’ll ask again. What do you want?” 

Sansa steps back, out of her reach. “Nothing from you. Whatever you are.” 

There is a sound like Margarey’s laugh; behind the throne, the darkness moves. “Women in our position must make the best of our circumstances,” says the smiling thing with the dead queen’s face, and Sansa wakes alone in her bed.

 

++

 

Five days later, she joins Bran at the head of the train. 

His Kingsguard ride ahead of them, just within earshot; Sansa guides her horse close to his and keeps her voice low. “I suppose you know I’ve been avoiding you,” she says. 

“Of course,” Bran says, something almost wry in his toneless voice. “I know everything.” 

The landscape has turned grey and wintery since they left the Kingsroad, the vivid hues of summer slowly leeched from the ground and sky as they travel closer to the Wall. Now their path is swallowed by mist, a deep fog that obscures the distance and clings to their winter furs. At times, Sansa imagines that she can smell the sea. 

She smells it now, tasting salt on her tongue as she takes a cold, steadying breath. “You know that Jon shares my bed. That he’s to be the father of my heir. Does that — bother you, at all?”

Bran stares straight ahead, his expression stiff. “I saw how you were together, after you found him at Castle Black. After you took back Winterfell. I know how important he is to you.” 

Sansa nods, ignoring the chill that licks down her spine. She’d rather not think about just how much of her life Bran has seen. “He is,” she agrees. “Very important.” 

Bran turns to her, a challenge in his eyes. “When we were children, you didn’t care about him at all. You never loved him, not the way the rest of us did.”

Sansa holds his gaze for a long moment, letting herself feel the sting of his words. The fog around them grows thicker. “We’re not children anymore, Bran.” 

He looks away. “No,” he says. “We’re not.” 

“You think I’m taking advantage of him. Manipulating him.”

“You wouldn’t need to.” He shakes his head, something akin to annoyance or anger in the tightness of his mouth. “Jon would do anything for you, Sansa. Surely even you can see that.” 

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Her voice is sharp enough to earn a backwards glance from Brienne, riding ahead of them. The knight gives them both a disapproving look before turning her eyes back to the road. 

“I think she learned that look from Mother,” Bran says in an undertone. “I’ve been trying not to let on how effective it is.”

Sansa stares at him, her grip tight on her reins. “You’ve changed. I don’t know what it is, but you’re different than you were before.” 

“We are all different now,” he says in his usual enigmatic monotone. “You most of all.”  

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, and Bran laughs. 

The sound is sweet and strange and a little hoarse, like a child’s laugh from an old man’s throat. She thinks it might be the first time he’s laughed since he stopped being a boy, and became a god instead. 

“You’re an ass,” Sansa says, and the laugh tips into a snort.  

For a surreal moment she feels as if she has been dropped into another world, one where their mother and father and brothers are still alive, where they had never left home. What would that Bran look and sound like? How would he laugh, if he were not a king or a raven or a god, but simply a young man on a horse, travelling with his family beneath a grey Northern sky?

Bran stops laughing abruptly. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” he says. “Something you want to ask me.” He leans in close, his eyes unnaturally bright and fixed on hers. “Sansa, have you been dreaming?”  

Hoofbeats, approaching from behind — Jon rides up alongside them, his posture tense. He looks to Bran. “It’s the Wall, Your Grace. We’re close.” 

“How can you tell?” Sansa asks, unsettled. Her horse suddenly skittish. “The fog is too thick; I can hardly—”    

And then the Wall is there, pale as mist and shockingly close. It eats up the sky, filling her vision. The shattered ruin of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea clings to the ice above them in jagged pieces, and just beyond—  

“Gods,” Jon breathes, awe-stricken. The place where the Night King blasted through the Wall is a gaping wound in the ice, vast and ragged-edged and somehow instinctively _wrong_ , almost painful to look on. Jon moves ahead of them and jerks his horse to a stop, his hand on his sword. 

Three figures emerge from the mist, moving towards them on the road. The first is a direwolf as large as Ghost, with bared fangs and golden, staring eyes; the second a giant at least ten feet in height, bearded and furred and cradling an enormous wooden chest in its arms. 

The third figure is tiny, almost childlike by comparison — a woman with her long, dark hair worn in a twisted plait, and a needle-thin blade in her hand.  

Arya grins up at them, a wicked scar splitting her left cheek from mouth to ear. “How convenient,” she says, sheathing her sword. “Just the siblings I was looking for.”


End file.
